


i don't believe in destiny (does that feel right?)

by glitterandglass



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Drama, Fluff, Human Bill Cipher, Magic, Multi, POV Alternating, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23357071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandglass/pseuds/glitterandglass
Summary: Before Bill can back out of the deal, now understanding that he’s made a massive mistake, he feels his consciousness begin to erode away from the Axolotl’s shore and into the sea between it and the third dimension.Or, Bill gets turned into a human in order to atone for his sins and gets found by a now 19 year old Dipper Pines. And that's just the BEGINNING of his problems.
Relationships: Bill Cipher/Dipper Pines, Pacifica Northwest/Mabel Pines
Comments: 119
Kudos: 247





	1. Wake

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the billdip fic that nobody will read bc who cares abt this fandom anywho? (i do)
> 
> anyways i've got about 50k written so far which means i'm not done with the story but i will be soon. updates every week i think :)
> 
> title is from jack stauber's epic song pizza boy. please enjoy!

Bill Cipher has been here before. Unfortunately. 

He doesn’t ‘wake up’ as much as he does ‘materialize.’ One minute, there’s immense pressure as his mental form is pulverized from inside Stan’s mind, ripped from his physical body with a horrible pulling sensation like barbed wire through flesh, the next he’s tumbling into the endless abyss of the Axolotl’s chamber. Like sand, swept up by the current, he’s deposited before the being greater than any known god in infinite pieces. He tumbles through the sparkling saccharine clouds, refracting light in colors far greater than those discovered by man, and when he dares lift his eye before the infinite creature, he feels its black sockets return the favor. 

“Axolotl! To what do I owe the pleasure?” He laughs, but it’s hollow. As a demon, he rarely feels mortal emotions—certainly none so primitive as panic—but he finds himself now consumed by it. The giant creature’s coral frills warble with its laugh, and it floats closer to Bill with an unmoving expression.

“Do you not recall invoking me?” It asks. Bill blinks in response. His final moments in the corporeal world are still crawling back to his awareness, as are most of his senses in this sluggish time and space between time and space. The Axolotl sighs and rolls over, splaying its stomach towards the sky—or, what would be the sky if this plane had such concepts. “It appears we are back where we started those millenia ago,” it groans tiredly. “Once again, you’ve grown too confident in your abilities, and once again, you have been defeated because of it.”

Briefly, Bill’s vision goes red as he remembers his defeats—yes,  _ plural _ —in the earthly plane. This one, however, may have been his most humiliating failure yet. At least with that Shaman back in the BC’s it had taken ten of the village’s strongest mages to overcome him. This time it had been nothing more than a plucky little family with nothing to their name but a surprisingly good left hook and an inordinate number of twins.

“Just end it already,” he mutters. The Axolotl doesn’t react. “I’ve razed the second dimension with everyone I’d ever known inside, I’ve created a foaming, hellish crawlspace dimension destined for destruction, and I’ve struggled innumerable times to overtake the third dimension. All I have to show for myself, after trillions of eons of existence…” The electric yellow glow of Bill’s spectral form goes pale with his next words. “...is failure.” 

“I see. So you wish to join every other forgotten sock in the dryer of oblivion?” The Axolotl does not betray how it feels about this, if anything it sounds bored.

“Forgive me for not understanding the metaphor,” Bill mutters. “I just feel like… like I’m no better than those stupid mortals, washed away in eternity without making so much as a bruise on the endlessness of time. I’ve been given immortality and I still don’t know what to do with it.”

“Perhaps the futility of mortal life is the very reason the third dimension has so much of it. If everything dies eventually and nothing truly matters, then perhaps the universe intended it to be this way. Perhaps it created everything that exists simply to consume the time that it provides.” The Axolotl drifts closer to Bill, empty black eyes boring into him. “Actuality would be very boring if nothing was there to appreciate it. How can an immortal being appreciate the one thing that, by definition, it will never run out of?” 

“Again, sorry to disappoint you Great Pink One, but I’m not really following.” Bill all but groans. Why do godlike entities always have to speak in riddles? 

The Axolotl turns back upright, and though its expression hasn’t changed, Bill suddenly senses that it has become very serious. 

“Then I will show you, Cipher. I’ve long felt that you are intended for a different purpose than the one you have been pursuing.” Bill actually perks up at that. Could it be that he’s being given another chance? After everything? “Furthermore,” the Axolotl continues, “It may serve as a punishment for you nearly destroying the infinite dimensions in a foolish, gaudy display of selfishness.” Ah, there’s the punchline. 

“I guess there’s no getting around it,” Bill sighs, although in his head he’s rapidly flickering through different means of circumventing whatever terms the creature is about to lay upon him, preparing himself to rake them for loopholes he can exploit. He just can’t help himself, it’s rare for a demon to change its devious nature. 

“I will send you back to the third dimension—” Bill’s vision goes gold with glee— “But only for the space of one Earthen year. If, within that time, you are able to complete the mission of mortality, you will be restored your powers and permitted to stay. If you are unsuccessful, I will gladly write you off as a lost cause and wipe you from all known existence.”

Suddenly, everything seems frighteningly more complicated. “Okay,” Bill draws out the word, searching for a dignifiable response. “You say I’ll be ‘restored my powers,’ does that mean that in the meantime I’ll be…?” He doesn’t finish the question, too terrified of the answer. 

“Granted a human form, yes.” The Axolotl voices the exact words Bill had been dreading to hear.  _ It’s fine,  _ he thinks,  _ I’ve inhabited human bodies before. It’ll be a breeze.  _

“Right, of course,” Bill nods, swallowing the rage and slight panic rising in his soul. “And what does the mission of mortality entail, exactly?”

At this, the Axolotl actually  _ smiles.  _

“Why, to love and be loved, of course.”

Of course.

Before Bill can back out of the deal, now understanding that he’s made a massive mistake, he feels his consciousness begin to erode away from the Axolotl’s shore and into the sea between it and the third dimension. 

When he wakes up this time, he  _ actually  _ wakes up. His eyes flutter open, and he feels  _ heavy.  _ It’s like there are bags of sand tied to each of his limbs, preventing him from moving with his usual ease. He groans, and his voice sounds… different. Singular. Mortal. Gone is the unique, robot-like drone of his old voice, now replaced with a low, rich tone like dark, raw honey. 

He sits up and rubs at his eyes. Glancing at his surroundings, he finds himself stranded in the middle of a clearing somewhere deep in the woods. Judging by the way the white sun slants through the pine leaves’ canopy, it’s still before noon. He looks down at his legs—he has  _ legs  _ now—and sees them clad in ebony colored slacks, his feet covered by similarly colored dress shoes. They’re long and lanky, though Bill finds, after a bit of touching, in no lack of toned muscle. He feels at his torso, finding a golden vest covering a tight waist and flaring out at the shoulders and down at the hips in flamboyant yellow coattails. The hands that rake over his flat stomach are a rich tan, with long, spindly fingers to match his even longer limbs. In his peripheral vision, he spies a wisp of blond hair, with a slight curl to it. 

He stands and brushes the dirt off his clothes, smirking. The Axolotl sure knows how to dress a guy, he thinks. He stretches out his newfound physical form, sighing at the pleasantly painful pops that go off like firecrackers down his spine. Then he snaps his fingers to summon a compass. 

Nothing comes. 

He snaps again, and again, before his stomach sinks with realization. 

No powers. 

He’s stranded in the middle of the woods with no powers.

He whirls around, trying to catch his bearings, blinking desperately at the trees and searching for any sign of familiarity. His first thought at being back in the corporeal world had been to find someone or something to take his anger out on before going out to solve whatever infuriating puzzle the Axolotl had given him so he could get on with his demonic life, but now…

Bill stumbles back, and his feet connect with something hard and cool, causing him to fall back onto his ass. He curses in Latin, glaring at the offending stone only to feel his eyes widen as his heart begins to race at an alarming speed.

The stone is triangular, with a single eye in the middle and a skinny top hat sitting atop it. It stares at Bill blankly, moss creeping over its vertical pupil. 

It’s… it’s him. This is—was—his physical form before he was separated from it. 

How long was he in that Axolotl’s nest? 

His palms prickle with moisture as his breath comes shorter and thinner with each inhale. His heart is so loud he can hear it roaring in his ears, and suddenly that’s all he can hear. Is he dying? Is the Axolotl deeming him unfit to complete the task already? Stumbling blindly through the brush, he takes off in a sprint, fleeing the mocking statue as the sick feeling inside him grows stronger and stronger. Why is this happening to him? What caused it? What did he do wrong? He doesn’t know, and honestly, he doesn’t care. All he knows is that he needs to get  _ out.  _

So he runs, and he runs, and he runs until he physically cannot any further. By the time he decides to slow down, the morning light has slipped into the orange hues of evening, and his brow is soaked in sweat. He looks through the ominous black stalks of the redwood trees, casting long shadows over him and everything else they can reach. If these woods are anything like or near the ones surrounding Gravity Falls, the creatures of the night will be coming soon. He doesn’t want to be mortal to see  _ that  _ through, so he continues walking, knowing that if anyone walks for long enough in any direction they’re bound to hit civilization at some point. 

He trudges on. 


	2. Gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowie i was not expecting so many nice comments after just one chapter! thank you so much for believing in this story!!

Dipper doesn’t see the strange man sprawled in the middle of the clearing until he almost trips over him. Not much has changed about Dipper’s unhealthy habits of walking with his nose buried in a book in the seven years since that first summer he and Mabel had started coming down to Gravity Falls. Even now, at freshly 19 years old, he can still be found knocking into lamp posts and falling into bushes on the campus of Gravity Falls’ local university simply because he can’t drag his eyes away from whatever book he has in his hands.

This time, incidentally, it’s a book about the properties of golden hour sun on certain herbs and potions that he’s reading when he nearly topples over a man who looks like Apollo himself. If it weren’t for the soft groan Dipper caught escaping the man’s lips, he might’ve crushed the man’s head beneath his dirty brown combat boot. 

“Woah!” Dipper cries, fumbling to stow the book away in his knapsack. He drops to his knees beside the man, who is whimpering quietly, though unconscious, under the dappled afternoon light. He has a handsome face, with thick brows framing long black eyelashes, and smooth, tan skin stretched over sharp cheekbones and a hardened jawline. He doesn’t look to be that much older than Dipper, maybe in the 21 to 24 range. His hair is odd, it’s all deep black save for a shock of silky blond in the front, which dangles over his frowning face. He’s wearing a neat (though somewhat gaudy) yellow suit vest, with a black undershirt rolled up to his elbows. It appears rather unharmed by the elements, indicating that this man hasn’t been out in these woods for too long. Dipper thanks heaven for that, it’s easy to get hurt out here in the strange areas of his town.

“Hey man, are you okay?” He tries, shaking the man’s shoulder gently. He only groans in response, causing Dipper’s stomach to sink with worry. A quick scan over his physical features shows no signs of bites, marks, scratches, or discolorations that might’ve pointed towards magical foul play, which is a relief. He tries once more to wake him up, and the man’s eyes open blearily for a moment before fluttering shut once more.

Dipper’s breath catches in his throat when he sees they’re a vibrant shade of yellow. 

That might mean something bad, he thinks, slinging the man’s arm over his shoulder and hoisting him up (with no small amount of difficulty) in a fireman’s carry. Finally adjusting to the man’s entire weight, Dipper wheezes as he starts the trek back to the shack, mind racing with possible reasons for the bright yellow eyes. It’s possible that the man’s eyes truly are just that unique shade of dandelion, and that Dipper is worrying for nothing, but when has that ever been the case for him? 

He’s just finished adding  _ research kitsune legends  _ to his mental to-do list after raking his memory for mythological creatures with yellow eyes when he stumbles into view of the Mystery Shack. Soos is sitting on the porch with his wife, Melody, on their break from working in the shack. Both are laughing at something Soos has said, donning carefully knit sweaters (courtesy of Mabel) as the air toys with the autumn leaves just beginning to drift from their stations atop thick birch branches. It’s rare for many leaves to fall in their evergreen-infested town, so once the oaks and birches and maples do start shedding their hair the people of Gravity Falls know to prepare for colder weather. 

“Soos!” Dipper calls, stumbling beneath the weight of the stranger draped over his body. Now that his destination is finally in sight, his adrenaline starts to wean and the body over his shoulder gets heavier and heavier. Soos glances up, and in an instant is at Dipper’s side, shrugging the unconscious man off of Dipper and into his capable arms. Dipper groans in both relief and pain at the chance to roll his aching muscles back, but it lasts only a moment before he’s ushering Soos inside, barking orders and gathering materials. 

“Who  _ is _ that guy?” Melody asks behind Soos as they bring the man into a spare bedroom and place him gently over the covers. 

“I don’t know, I found him in the woods,” Dipper explains, grabbing a few notebooks and spreading them out across the desk beside the bed as he flips to specific dog-eared pages and begins scribbling down notes. 

“What?!” Melody and Soos cry at the same time.

“I was exploring and I found him on the ground so I brought him here,” Dipper recaps, pulling a crystal from a jar in his knapsack and twisting it onto a piece of puttylike material that looks like liquid bronze. The crystal begins to emit a faint orange  glow, and Dipper flicks it a few times, satisfied. Then he holds it up to the man’s face and pinches it, cracking small flakes of the glowing crystal over his face. The man breathes them in, then instantly falls still in deep, peaceful slumber. 

“What did you just do, dude?” Soos asks warily, peering at the body now lying still as a stone against the bed.

“Stasis crystal,” Dipper explains. “It’ll sort of pause all his systems, to keep him stable while I figure out what’s wrong with him.” 

Just then, the telltale sound of joints cracking accompanied by the heavy creaking of the old wooden boards of the shack indicates that Grunkle Stan is approaching the guest room. When he walks in wearing his usual touring attire—a black suit with an eye patch and a cryptic red fez—holding a hot mug of coffee, he barely blinks in acknowledgement of the comatose man. This shack has seen stranger things. 

“Yeesh, that guy looks like he hasn’t slept in days,” Stan grunts, eyes flickering over the man’s prone form. 

“How can you tell?” Dipper asks as Stan walks into the room, nudging Dipper aside and picking up the man’s hand, giving the back of it a pinch. 

“Dipper, take one look at those eye bags and tell me that’s the face of a man who’s been getting a full 8 hours. Also, he’s severely dehydrated. Take a look at this skin elasticity, woof.” Grunkle Stan holds up the hand he’d been studying, showing Dipper how the pinched skin sags back down to its original place splayed across his knuckles as if it’s reluctant to return. “It isn’t rocket science, kid,” Stan snorts with a laugh. “He’s probably pretty hungry, too. I’d wake him up soon and get him some food and water before he kicks the bucket.”

“Never took you for the nursing type,” Dipper mutters even as he works to create a magician-strength smelling salt. Stan shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee.

“You pick up these kinds of things when you’re taking care of two kids who would rather spend their days wasting away reading fairy stories and exploring the woods than watching TV and eating junk like normal people,” Stan gripes, and though he sounds annoyed, a warm smile spreads across Dippers face at the (many) memories of his Grunkle casually offering him and his twin sister a bottle of water as they ran from room to room or tossing them a package of saltines to munch on before a mystery stakeout. 

Stan leaves the room, calling for Soos and Melody to follow him as their break is almost up. Soos looks anxiously between Dipper and the door, obviously torn between his devotion to Stan and his protective instincts over Dipper. 

“It’s alright, guys. I’ll call if I need anything. Besides, Mabel is getting back from Pacifica’s any minute now. I’ll be cool,” Dipper dismisses the couple with a nod towards the door, as his hands are occupied tying red string around a bundle of dried eucalyptus leaves and lemongrass. When he’s finished, he lights the two ends of the string on fire, and just as the flames reach the center bow, he whispers the magic words and pulls it taut, focusing his magic into the tight center of the bundle. In a small explosion of red smoke, the magical smelling salts pour into the stranger’s nostrils, and his eyes flies wide open as he coughs. 

Dipper puts a hand against his chest to soothe him, tossing the ashen remains of his spell onto the desk and peering down at the stranger with worry. 

“Where am I?” He rasps weakly. Dipper brings a cup of water up to his lips in lieu of responding.

“Here, drink this. It’s just water,” Dipper explains. For a moment, the man looks like he wants to argue, but the moment the cool liquid touches his lips he’s gulping it down so quickly it almost makes Dipper dizzy. He puts the empty cup on the desk and holds up an apple slice (courtesy of Soos), feeding it to the man who is still too weak to even sit up on his own. Dipper rubs supporting circles in the man’s back as he eats, but he only gets through four slices before he’s weakly pushing Dipper’s arm away, murmuring incomprehensible protests. 

“You should get some sleep, but be ready to eat some more when you wake up, okay?” Dipper asks, trying not to let the dangerous amount of worry he feels slip into his speech. The man, fortunately, doesn’t seem to notice, as he just grunts an affirmative and collapses back on the bed, leaving Dipper in suffocating silence.

He gazes down at the sleeping man with a million questions whirling through his mind. Who is he? How did he end up in the middle of the woods? What’s the deal with the fancy yellow suit? In a different time, Dipper might’ve assumed demonplay was at work, judging by the strangely colored eyes. But when his family killed Bill Cipher seven years ago, all other demonic lifeforms had been scared into hiding. There hasn’t been a demon sighting since. Although, they probably won’t stay gone forever, just because Bill Cipher is. It would be naive of him to think so.

Remembering his mental note to take another look at kitsune legends—Japanese fox spirits said to have been able to inhabit mortal bodies betrayed only by their glowing yellow eyes—Dipper reluctantly leaves the guest room for the attic. 

His bedroom hasn’t changed much since Mabel moved out last year when she went to study abroad in Europe with her now girlfriend, Pacifica. Mabel’s colorful corner of the triangular room has been cleared out, replaced by a few dilapidated bookshelves, straining under the weight of the dozens of spellbooks, tales of legend, and alchemy tomes Dipper has collected for his research. 

To anyone on the outside, his little library just looks like very dedicated notes for his fictional writing in the local paper. But to Dipper, and anyone who knows him closely, every article he writes about gnomes and fairy migration patterns are very much real. His little corner of the paper has gained its fair share of popularity since the Weirdmageddon, when everyone started to see that perhaps not everything is as it seems. He’s given advice to countless townsfolk on how to banish spirits, goblins, imps, and all sorts of other creatures from harassing their families, and in return he’s made a tiny living out of it. It’s a dream come true for him, he gets to base his life around the one thing he loves most—exploring Gravity Falls. 

Though it comes with no small share of difficulty. He’s covered in scars from his more unfortunate run-ins with creatures less than happy to see him. Also, he’s always just been a bit of a clumsy kid. Without the other half of the Mystery Twins, it feels like he’s been falling into more and more dangerous situations and barely escaping them alive. Every brush with death is both terrifying and exhilarating, spurning him forward to discover new wards and spells to protect himself, and he’s become quite a decent mage in the process. 

Or at least, he  _ hopes  _ he’s decent. It’s not like there’s really anyone to compare his skills to. Ford is more obsessed with the science fiction side of Gravity Falls’ weirdness, which is fair. Magic is far more illogical, more luck-based than strategy.

He finds the books he thinks he’ll need—a journal by a man who claimed he survived a kitsune possession back in the 1800’s, an old book about  _ Yokai  _ and other Japanese demons, a worn out pamphlet about the ‘safe eye scale,’ and another about landvættir and other spirits of uninhabited land, just to be safe. Then he teeters down the stairs, a pencil in his mouth and his journal under his arm. 

When he gets back to the guest room, the man hasn’t stirred, which Dipper supposes is a good sign. He isn’t whimpering in pain anymore, so maybe he really was just hungry and dehydrated. Dipper drops the books as quietly as he can onto the wooden desk, then leaves to grab one more. Who knows? Maybe the sketchbook of a blind artist will have something relevant. You can never be too sure. 

Just as he’s closing the door behind him, the front door to the house swings open and he hears Mabel’s excited squeal.

“Dipper!” she shrieks, “Dipper Dipper Dipper look look look!” Her footsteps grow louder and louder as she comes stampeding through the house before barreling into him in a flurry of neon colors.

“Ow, Mabel, what—” Dipper’s complaints are cut short when his eyes focus on the beautiful band situated atop her left ring finger, which she’s now shoving into his face. He recognizes the ring, after all, he helped Pacifica pick it out at the beginning of the summer. A rich shade of rosy gold encircles her finger, and Dipper knows that on the inside is a cursive inscription that reads  _ My Dancing Queen, forever and always.  _ The ring is topped by a single gorgeous white diamond, wound tightly in thin, curling metal with six heart-shaped ends holding the stone in place. It’s very Pacifica, but also  _ very  _ Mabel. 

“Pacifica  _ proposed! _ ” Mabel gushes. She brings the ring back to her body, holding it close to her chest. “Can you  _ believe  _ it?!”

“Holy shit, Mabel! That’s awesome!” Dipper stands up and grabs his twin sister in a hug so tight it lifts her off her feet as she giggles. Pacifica’s shadow appears at the end of the hall, and when Dipper glances over she’s smiling wider than he’s ever seen.

“I know! I can’t believe it!” Mabel cries, releasing Dipper and running over to her fiancée. “I’m still mad you beat me to it, though. I thought I was supposed to be the one wearing the pants in this relationship!”

“Oh, please. I’d sooner  _ die  _ than let you pick my engagement ring,” Pacifica scoffs, but Dipper knows that she’s wearing the necklace made out of cut up straws, glitter, and seashells that Mabel made for their four year anniversary gift, and has been wearing it almost every day since then. Instead of responding, Mabel just laughs and kisses her, then takes her hand and pulls her over to the living room where they’re yet to tell Grunkle Stan. Before Pacifica follows, she turns to Dipper and mouths a quick ‘thank you!’

Dipper gives her a thumbs-up and a wink as she’s dragged away. 

Deciding he has a few minutes to kill before they decide to go do something to celebrate, Dipper runs upstairs to grab the sketchbook and returns to the guest room to start his studies. Hopefully he can gather a few theories before the man wakes up, just in case he turns out to be evil. As much as it sucks to think about, it would be good to know the weaknesses of the man he just rescued from death by exposure if he chooses to turn on them. 

Especially if he really  _ is  _ a demon.

Dipper shakes the thought and opens the eye guide, trying to decide if the color had closer resembled a dandelion or daisy. 

The second time Bill wakes up in the mortal world, everything hurts. He feels weak and dizzy, his head is killing him, and his stomach feels like it's folding in on itself. He doesn’t remember falling asleep again, what was he doing?

He was running, running away from that stupid statue.

But how did he get here?

And where exactly  _ is _ here?

He groans and rubs his eyes. He’s in a dark room, with pale moonlight streaking in from a window beside his bed. Beneath the window there’s a desk covered in papers and stacks of books, each with thousands of sticky notes poking out from thousands of pages. Aside from that, the room is relatively empty. There’s a simple shag carpet on the hardwood floor, and the walls are bare save for a single dirty mirror set up in the corner. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake!” A voice says, and Bill jumps.

“Who is that? Who’s there?” He demands. Just then, a boy’s head pops up beside him from the ground next to his bed. He has fluffy brown hair and long brown lashes framing intelligent sepia eyes. His face is pale, and in the dark Bill can still make out a small smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. He rubs his face sleepily, then stands up and grabs something from the desk. He’s probably almost a foot shorter than Bill, and he looks to be about 18 human years old. Bill thinks he looks familiar, but he can’t place it. 

“I found you collapsed in the woods so I brought you here, to my house,” the boy explains. “Here, you should eat something. You must be starving,” he hands Bill a plate with what looks to be apple slices and some crackers. Bill looks at the food warily. He’s never eaten human food before. “I can get you a proper meal once you’ve started out small. I think I read somewhere that you shouldn’t overstuff hunger victims because it can rupture your stomach lining? Or something?” The boy rambles. “I don’t really know, just start with this.”

“I’m fine,” Bill says with a scowl. How dare this insolent teenager tell him what to do? The food is probably poisonous! He’s trying to manipulate him while he’s weak, but Bill won’t fall for it. He’s too good to fall victim to stupid tricks, even in a feeble human form. 

“You sure? You barely had half the apple last time, I doubt that—”

“What?!” Bill roars. Well, he tries to, but his voice comes out scratchy. “You’ve already forced that poison into me?!” The boy looks taken aback, and he sets the plate down. 

“It isn’t poison, it’s apples. Unless you’re some sort of creature whose weakness is apples…” The boy frowns and turns to the desk, where he starts scribbling notes and muttering something about the Garden of Eden. Then he stops and stands up, grabbing the plate again. “Don’t you remember waking up earlier? I guess you might’ve been too weak to be fully conscious…”

“Who are you? And why did you bring me here?” Bill demands. 

The boy looks up at the ceiling and huffs a somewhat exasperated sigh, which only serves to make Bill angrier. “My name is Dipper Pines. You’re in my house, in Gravity Falls, Oregon.” 

Bill suddenly feels like his breath has been punched out of him.  _ This  _ is  _ Pine Tree?!  _ As in, the dorky little kid who, last Bill checked, was scared of his own shadow? 

Pine Tree sighs, brow creased with frustration. “And you’re here because… well, I found you and you looked like you were in bad shape, so I wanted to help you, I don’t know. Just eat something? Please? You’re severely malnourished.”

Bill can’t believe his luck. The one family he wants nothing more than to destroy has just supposedly rescued him from being stranded in the woods. And let him into their home! Oh, this is just perfect. Now all he has to do is murder the boy, then he’ll go find the others. He’ll watch as the light dies from their eyes at his hands, maybe slice them up into tiny pieces, rip their fingers from their screaming bodies, peel the flesh from their bones and relish in the warm, slick feeling of their blood between his fingers—!

Suddenly Bill feels very sick. His throat constricts, as if he wants to vomit, but his stomach is empty. 

“Woah! Are you okay, man? God, I hope you didn’t catch imp flu,” Pine Tree frets about, grabbing a glass of water and pushing it to Bill’s lips. “Here, drink this. It’s just water, not poison, it’ll make you feel better—”

Bill swats him away, stumbling off the bed, but his legs won’t hold him. They collapse beneath his weight, and he topples to the shag carpet where he finds a pillow and a sleeping roll. Pine Tree must’ve been sleeping on the ground next to him—so vulnerable! Bill could have easily leaned over and strangled him, crushing his little windpipe beneath his hands—

The queasiness comes again, and Bill gags. For some reason, his own throat starts to feel very tight. What strange mockery of Bill’s nature is this? Every time he thinks about violence towards the human race, his  _ default  _ thinking pattern, his body rejects it! Some sort of mental barrier the Axolotl has put into place to keep him well behaved? But humans murder other humans all the time! What makes Bill any different?

“Dude, settle down. I’m not gonna hurt you,” Pine Tree sits down beside Bill and holds up the cup of water again, more tentative this time. “Look, this water’s safe, see?” Pine Tree takes a sip from the glass, then wipes his mouth and holds it up to him with a little smile. Bill declines to mention that he could’ve poisoned it with something Pine Tree is immune to, and instead takes the glass, intending to take one fake sip simply to appease the brat’s whining.

He tips the glass, and some primal instinct inside his human body opens his mouth wide, dumping half its contents down his throat before he pulls back to take a gasping breath. Then he goes in again, finishing the water entirely before handing the glass back to Pine Tree. 

He does feel a lot better, he’ll admit. But only because he’s inside this stupid human body with its stupid human necessities. 

“There, doesn’t that feel better?” Pine Tree asks with a happy look on his face. Bill declines to answer. Pine Tree doesn’t seem to notice. “Do you wanna try eating something now?” Bill gives the pitiful plate a scathing look, but his stomach contracts in on itself at the sight. 

“Fine,” he snaps. Delighted, Pine Tree passes the plate to Bill, who immediately begins wolfing down its contents with a vigor reserved only for lower life forms such as the one he now inhabits. That’s all this is, he’s taken up a flesh suit, a mere shell to wear temporarily while he figures out how to solve the Axolotl’s puzzle. 

When Bill is finished eating the contents of the plate—though his stomach still whines for more—Pine Tree takes it away and places it beside the empty cup. He looks like he’s about to say something when the door swings open with a small creak.

“Dipper, could you quiet—oh! You’re awake!” A woman stands in the doorway, dressed in an oversized white tee shirt and a pair of checkered boxers. Her hair is long, down to her mid-thigh, and braided into a messy plait. Bill can’t see her face very well in the darkness, but he assumes that this is what Shooting Star has become in the time that he’s been gone. She’s taller now, not as tall as Pine Tree, but still taller than she was when Bill first met her. Even through the large shirt, he can see that she’s filled out into more of a woman’s shape, with wider hips and a thinner waist. 

“Babe, what’s going on?” Another sleepy feminine voice sounds from down the hall, and in the doorway appears another woman, a bit shorter than Shooting Star, with platinum blonde hair pulled into an array of curlers atop her head. She’s wearing a silky purple nightgown with little llamas patterned across it. This must be the rich brat who tried to banish Bill with that accursed zodiac, the one that stood on the llama symbol. Bill almost laughs. The first time that zodiac had been used, it was a stinky peasant farmer who took her place. He wonders how she’d feel if he told her. 

Llama wraps her arms around Shooting Star’s waist and pouts. “Babe, come back to bed, I’m tired,” she whines. Shooting Star rolls her eyes and untangles herself from Llama’s arms.

“C’mon Paz, that weird guy is awake,” Shooting Star says. 

“Uh, I’m right here,” Bill scoffs. 

“Actually, speaking of which, we didn’t get your name,” Pine Tree interjects.

“That’s because I didn’t give it,” Bill snaps. 

“Uh oh! Somebody’s grumpy,” Shooting Star teases. “I’m Mabel, and this is my  _ fiancée,  _ Pacifica,” she says, placing a strong emphasis on the word ‘fiancée.’ Behind her, Llama giggles. 

“Pleasure,” Bill all but growls. Here are two more people that he hates more than anything in the world, and he’s too weak to get up and kill them. It’s an utter tragedy. 

“C’mon Oscar the Grouch, let me get you some real food,” Shooting Star struts out of the room with Llama in tow, and Bill shoots an accusatory glare over at Pine Tree.

“I  _ knew  _ it was fake sustenance! You were trying to poison me!” he snarls. Pine Tree rolls his eyes.

“Well, you’re not dead, so I think it’s safe to say it was real. Seriously, man. We’re on your side here,” he says, as if  _ Bill  _ is being the unreasonable one. Stupid brat, he’ll show Pine Tree who’s boss once he’s finished murdering everyone he holds dear.

Bill staggers to his feet, using the bedpost beside him for assistance. He looks down at his legs, willing them to move, but they’re aching and weak. Why must human bodies be so feeble?

“Here man, I got you,” Pine Tree says, grabbing Bill’s arm and slingling it around his shoulder while at the same time pulling himself firmly against Bill’s side. The arm closest to Bill slips around his waist, gripping it supportively. “Just lean on me.”

“But you’re so small,” Bill says with a smirk, remembering the boy’s noodly arms and scraped knees from the past. “How could you—”

“I carried you here, through the woods, didn’t I?” Pine Tree sighs. “I may not be a bodybuilder but I think I can handle helping you from here to the kitchen.”

This is news to Bill. So Pine Tree was able to drag him over the gnarled Gravity Falls landscape without any help? It doesn’t sound possible, but now, with the boy’s body pressed up against his, he can feel a decent amount of muscle. 

Interesting. 

Bill doesn’t respond, so Pine Tree takes it as a sign to start moving. Bill staggers for a second, but Pine Tree’s arm tightens around his waist and holds him steady. He takes another step, then another, and another, until they’re out of the room and in a dark hallway. Pine Tree leads him past picture frames depicting their family going fishing, climbing trees, going to the pool, all of them dripping with disgusting amounts of sappy happiness. Bill rolls his eyes. 

They get to the kitchen, where Shooting Star is darting between cabinets to grab armfuls of strange ingredients and dumping them onto the table. Pine Tree kicks a chair out from under it and dumps Bill onto it rather unceremoniously before turning to help his sister prepare some ‘real food.’ 

Pine Tree goes to a cupboard and reaches up to the top shelf, jumping a little in order to reach the jar stationed there, and Bill smirks. So small and pitiful. 

Pine Tree finally pulls the top off the jar and looks in, but his eyebrows draw together with apparent confusion at the contents. He leans in and takes a little sniff, then instantly his nose crinkles and he reels back, slamming the lid back onto the jar and turning to his sister with an accusatory glare. 

“Mabel, why is there Smile Dip in a jam jar?” Pine Tree suddenly asks, holding up said jar. “I thought we agreed to never touch this stuff again!”

“Smile Dip… isn’t that the weird candy that was found to have like,  _ lethal  _ amounts of psilocybin in it?” Llama says warily. “I thought it was illegal in like, over 200 countries.” Shooting Star laughs and waves her hand dismissively, snatching the jar from Pine Tree and putting it back in the cupboard.

“Hallucinogen, shmallucinogen. Just forget about it,” she chuckles. “Now, weird stranger, would you like peanut butter and jelly, or turkey and cheese?” She swivels to Bill, who blanches.

“You know, maybe I’ll just have more of those apple slices,” he says warily. “I don’t really need a… peanut butter and jelly?” Bill doesn’t know what either of those things are, and his stomach is whining desperately for more humanly sustenance, but he isn’t going to consume anything that went anywhere near an apparent dealer of illegal candies.

“Mabel, get out of the kitchen. You’re scaring him,” Pine Tree demands, ushering his sister and her fiancée back to the hallway from whence they came. 

“I’m not scared,” Bill protests, but Pine Tree either doesn’t hear him or ignores it. 

“Ugh, I’m sorry about her. She’s… well, she’s Mabel Pines. No other way to describe her.” Pine Tree pinches the bridge of his nose and goes back to the ingredients Shooting Star had gathered, scowling at a few of them. “Or, Mabel Northwest? Will she take Pacifica’s name?” Pine Tree murmurs mostly to himself, pulling two pieces of bread from a bag and setting them onto a paper towel he’s spread out on the counter. Bill watches, enraptured, as Pine Tree spreads a thick layer of peanut paste—no, peanut  _ butter _ —onto one half, before rinsing the knife and using it to cover the other piece in a bloody looking substance Bill recognizes as jelly. 

With Shooting Star and Llama gone, it would be so, so easy to just lunge over to the knife block, their handles glinting under the yellow kitchen light’s glow, and plunge it through Pine Tree’s neck. Like a lamb in the paws of a lion, Pine Tree is perfectly vulnerable to attack at any moment, and he won’t even be expecting it. He probably thinks Bill died the day they banished him to the Axolotl’s mercy. If Bill could  _ just  _ get his legs to move fast enough—

“There, a perfectly non-lethal PB&J. And I brought you some more water, just don’t drink it too fast,” Pine Tree interrupts Bill’s plotting by placing the sandwich on the table in front of him, sitting atop a new paper towel. He also slides another glass of water up to Bill’s knuckles on his left hand, and a little spills over the edge and trickles down onto his skin. Bill looks down at the liquid, gazing at the way it rolls over his flesh. His  _ human  _ flesh. 

Pine Tree plops down into the seat across from Bill, gazing at him with an odd look in his eye. He’s frowning, like he’s still trying to decide if Bill is safe. But he’s also got a glimmer of curiosity and excitement in those warm brown eyes, and Bill can tell that he’s just  _ dying  _ to interrogate him. Bill smirks as he lifts the sandwich to his mouth, tucking that observation away into his mental file reserved for bargaining material. 

Though, he supposes now that he’s powerless and inside a mortal shell, demonic dealmaking will be placed on the backburner for the time being. What a pity. 

Ah well, it will all be worth it when his powers are returned to him and he starts his next plan for planar domination, starting with the complete elimination of the Pines family bloodline. 

Bill can hardly wait. 

He finishes the sandwich in relative silence, with Pine Tree never taking his eyes off him. Bill takes a swig from the glass of water, reluctantly taking it slower than he’d like simply because he assumes Pine Tree would know more about the mechanics of this feeble form after being stuck in one for his entire existence. He smirks at Pine Tree, who is still gazing at him thoughtfully.

“Like what you see, kid?” he asks, raising his eyebrows seductively. Pine Tree’s face goes scarlet, and he staggers back in his chair, sputtering.

“What?! No, I—I mean, I was just—” he stammers, and Bill lets out a roaring laugh. Pine Tree scowls. “I just was wondering… I mean, I don’t want to sound rude or anything, so forgive me if this is too forward—well, it probably is, but—whatever, I don’t want to pry but I’m also—”

“C’mon kid, spit it out,” Bill coaxes. As fun as it is to watch Pine Tree fumble with his words, it does start to get annoying after a while. Pine Tree’s shoulders sag as he sighs in apparent defeat.

“What  _ are  _ you?” he asks. Bill stiffens.

“What do you mean?” Bill retorts. “I’m a regular guy, just like you.”

“But… your eyes,” Pine Tree mutters awkwardly, blushing again. 

“Hm? Is there something wrong with them?” Bill asks, standing and walking over to the tiny mirror stationed on a support beam next to the pantry. For the first time, he gets a view of his face.

It isn’t necessarily what he was expecting, but then again, he wasn’t really expecting anything. His skin is the same rich tan of his hands and arms, and he has smooth pink lips stretched over pearly white teeth, his canines slightly longer and sharper than strictly necessary. His nose is pointy, complimenting his high cheekbones and sharp jawline. His hair is the biggest surprise, he wasn’t expecting to see jet black surrounding the shock of golden blond that he’d noticed when he first woke up. His eyes—the eyes Pine Tree supposedly had been worried about—are the same vibrant shade of daffodil that his old form was, and his pupils are slightly elongated.

He looks fucking  _ amazing.  _

“Not bad, Axolotl,” he murmurs quietly so Pine Tree won’t hear. That big frilly fish made Bill into a serious catch. 

“Well, I mean, they’re  _ yellow, _ ” Pine Tree says. “Maybe my sample size of humans is too small, but I’m pretty sure most of us can’t have irises that color.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, kid. My eyes have always been like this, and last I checked I’m not anything more than a regular old human,” Bill says with a sigh. If he wasn’t human, he’d be laughing from the outside of the shack as it burned, the Pines family’s bodies trapped inside. He can imagine their tortured screams, it’s been too long since he’s smelled the sweet scent of burning human flesh.

Or, maybe not  _ too  _ long. The memory is suddenly making him a little queasy. 

Fucking Axolotl. 

“Then how did you end up malnourished and sleep deprived in the middle of the woods wearing an immaculate suit and tie?” Pine Tree protests. Bill blinks. He doesn’t have an answer for that. He’d been planning to have this family killed before he needed to answer any of those types of questions.

“I don’t remember,” he lies easily. Alright, he can do the amnesiac route. Sounds easy enough.

“You don’t remember,” Pine Tree repeats flatly. “That doesn’t make any sense! You didn’t have any head trauma, we destroyed all the remaining blind eye equipment, and you were dehydrated which means you probably didn’t drink from the fountain of Lethe—wait, did you?”

Bill struggles to mask his surprise. This kid has obviously done some more exploring since the last time they’d met, if he’s already found the fountain of Lethe: a spring carrying waters that, once ingested, would erase all prior memories in the person’s brain.

“No, I didn’t. The first thing I can remember was me waking up on the forest floor, and I didn’t know where I was. Then my whole body went hot, and it felt like I couldn’t breathe, and like I needed to just run. So I did,” Bill explains. He supposes saying as much can’t hurt anything, and if he stays as close to the truth as he can, it’ll be easier to maintain the amnesiac lie. 

“Sounds like you had a panic attack,” Pine Tree mutters. “I used to get those a lot right after the war, so did Pacifica and a few of our other friends. You must’ve been pretty scared.”

Panic  _ attack _ ?! So not only do humans have to feel panic, but sometimes they get  _ attacked  _ by it? And it had happened to Bill! He wants to punch something, or scream, or both. How in the hell did he agree to this stupid deal, with his stupid human body and its stupid human weaknesses?

“I’m sorry, I’m just… trying to figure everything out, I guess. You still haven’t even told me your name,” Pine Tree says with a groaning sigh. He rubs his eyes, obviously exhausted. 

Bill tosses the options for a response around in his head for a moment, before deciding on the one that’ll align best with his previous plan. As the humans always say, honesty is the best policy. 

“It’s William,” he says, and Pine Tree nods sleepily. A grin creeps up onto Bill’s lips, but he tries his best not to let it show. “But I usually go by Bill.”

Pine Tree freezes and looks up from the table where he’d been staring at emptily. Bill schools his face into that of complete innocence, pretending to be messing with his hair in his reflection as Pine Tree lets out a dark, humourless laugh.

“I’m way too tired for this,” he groans. 


	3. Cast

In the morning, Dipper knows he’s slept late when he sees how the sun is already creeping towards noon and the clambering sounds of breakfast are long gone. He sits up with a groan, his aching back crying in response. His muscles are sore from sleeping on the floor, but it’s a small price to pay for the opportunity to watch over their new houseguest. 

Speaking of which—Dipper bolts up and peers at the bed beside him, only to find it empty. His heart leaps into his throat. He scrambles out of the sleeping roll and staggers over to the door, yanking on the wiggly knob so hard it almost comes free from its screws.

“Oh! Hey bro-bro, I was just coming to check on you,” Mabel says, standing directly in front of the door Dipper had just thrown open.

“Mabel, where’s the guy?” he demands, wincing at the frantic rise in his voice. He pushes past her gently, marching into the empty living room.

“Jeez, good morning to you too,” Mabel says sarcastically. “And Bill? He went with the others to Greasy’s for breakfast. They should be coming back in a half hour.”

“Oh,” Dipper mutters. Right, Bill. That was his name. Dipper had been sort of hoping that it had all been a dream. “Why didn’t you go with them? You didn’t need to stay and check on me, I was just tired.”

“Paz and I are having celebratory brunch with her parents in a little bit, so we didn’t want to spoil our appetites,” Mabel explains, and for the first time Dipper notes her creamy pink sundress, with lacy frills scattered around the hem and at the ends of her sleeves. A matching pink bow sits atop her head, tying her hair into a high ponytail, and her mid-calf socks have little sparkly hearts embroidered around the hem. She looks like a little doll, which is probably fitting for a brunch at the Northwest Manor.

“Mabel, don’t you think it’s a little weird? The guy just showing up in the middle of the woods, in a perfect yellow-and-black color scheme, and his name also  _ happens  _ to be Bill?” Dipper blurts out. It had taken him far too long to drift back to sleep after the man—Bill—had woken up a few hours before sunrise, his brain going dizzy with suspicion and worry.

“Dipper, there are a million men out there named William, and I’m sure that almost all of them shorten their name to Bill. It’s not an uncommon name,” Mabel lectures as she messes with a few baby hairs that have fallen out of her ponytail, curling them around her finger. 

“I know that, but—”

“Let’s say one day you’re walking and a girl with black hair sticks her foot out and trips you. The next time you meet a girl with black hair, are you gonna say to her, ‘hey! Why’d you trip me on the street three weeks ago?’” Mabel asks, ignoring his protests.

“No, but—”

“Right. Because that would be discriminatory. You’re  _ discriminating,  _ Dippin-dot. Relax.” She finishes fretting with her hair and walks up to Dipper, putting a supportive hand onto his shoulder. She has to look up to meet him in the eye now—Dipper had gained no small amount of satisfaction once he started growing taller than her and she stopped growing altogether. 

“Bill Cipher is gone. We beat him, and we won. After everything we went through to get that, I think we deserve to let our guard down just a little bit,” she says, sympathy honeying her voice. Dipper sighs and rakes a hand through his fluffy hair, partially revealing his birthmark before the brown curls overtake it once more. 

“I know, I know. But you can’t blame me for being just a  _ little  _ suspicious, okay? I mean, he almost  _ killed  _ us.” Anger flares up inside Dipper’s chest at the memory, but it isn’t an unfamiliar sensation. He’s spent countless nights lying awake, gazing at the ceiling and being angry—angry at himself, angry at Gravity Falls, and most of all, angry at Bill Cipher. “He almost killed everyone.”

“Almost. That’s the key word you’re forgetting. We made it out, Dipper, but it feels like you’re still stuck.”

Dipper can only nod in response to that. Mabel sighs.

“Look. I talked to him a little bit this morning before he took off with the others, and he sounded pretty genuine. He even apologized for snapping at me last night, and I don’t think ‘sorry’ is anywhere in Bill Cipher’s vocabulary. Try spending some time with him when he gets back, I’m sure it’ll calm your nerves.” Mabel withdraws her touch on Dipper’s shoulder with a little squeeze. “If not, Grunkle Ford is gonna Skype call from some service tower in the Galapagos in a few weeks. You can do some investigation with him then.”

Dipper had wanted to go with Ford on that trip, investigating a certain species of tortoise that was said to have the knowledge of a thousand lifetimes, and whose ancient ancestors were the giant World Turtles who supposedly held up the universe. But he couldn’t leave Gravity Falls behind, especially since he would be starting his second year of college in just a few weeks and the project was slated to last half a year, maybe more. Ford always had the answers, and he was always willing to go on adventures that would create more questions. Dipper misses him.

Dipper nods just as Pacifica emerges from their room, draped in an elegant purple garment made from satin that twirls like a river around her. Her platinum blonde hair—which Dipper recently discovered really  _ is  _ her true hair color—has fallen loose from the curlers that had confined it last night, tumbling around her shoulders and down her back from a waterfall braid that wraps around her head like a halo. 

“You ready to go, my rainbow sprinkle cupcake?” Mabel asks, bending down to plant a kiss on Pacifica’s cheek. 

“Babe! Stop! You’ll mess up my makeup,” Pacifica whines, a red blush warming her cheeks and the tips of her ears. “The limo is pulling up now, so we should get going.”

“Good luck, you two!” Dipper calls with a smile as the couple skips out the door and onto the porch. 

“You too, bro-bro!” Mabel responds, and Pacifica shoots him a smile and a tiny wave just as a classy black limousine pulls up in front of the shack. They climb in, and Dipper watches the trail of dust it kicks behind all the way to the end of the drive. 

As if on cue, the roar of Stan’s beaten-down 1965 El Diablo calls out through the trees, steadily approaching the shack with the usual reckless gusto of Stan’s driving. The crimson car pulls up to the shack, and through the living room window Dipper sees Stan emerge carrying a bag of Greasy’s takeout. Soos gets out of the car to open the door for Melody, and on the other side of the car a head of blonde and black hair pops into view.

Dipper steels himself, suddenly embarrassed that he’s still in his pajamas.

“Hey kid! I brought back pancakes!” Grunkle Stan announces, throwing the front door open and holding up the bag. Dipper brightens.

“For me? Thanks!” He reaches out to take the bag, catching a whiff of Lazy Susan’s signature fluffy hotcakes. Soos is next in the door, clasping Melody’s hand. 

“Oh hey, you’re finally awake! Sorry we left without you, we didn’t want to wake you,” Melody apologizes, but Dipper dismisses it, rolling his eyes.

“Please, I probably would’ve killed you if you tried to wake me up anytime before eleven.”

Soos and Melody laugh, then follow Stan into the main section of the Mystery Shack to get set up for the next round of tourists coming through Gravity Falls. Then Dipper’s eyes land on him.

Bill.

“Hey,” Dipper greets awkwardly. Bill isn’t wearing his same yellow suit anymore, instead his torso is covered by one of Grunke Stan’s innumerable white dress shirts that he uses when he’s giving tours. It’s way too big for him, but he’s tucked it loosely into his black dress slacks and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, leaving the top handful of buttons undone. He makes the hand-me-downs look like a fashion statement, the fabric flowing with his movements like he’s a dashing pirate, soaking in the sea breeze. 

“Oh! Dipper, was it?” Bill brightens when he sees Dipper, then his shoulders shrink down slightly, and he reaches up to scratch the back of his neck in a startlingly bashful gesture. “Look, I’m…  _ really  _ sorry about the way I acted when I woke up—I was a jerk. I was startled and I didn’t realize what was going on, so I took it out on you,” Bill apologizes, and he sounds so earnest it almost makes Dipper uncomfortable. Mabel had said that he’d sounded genuine earlier in the morning, but she didn’t mention  _ this.  _ “I hope you can forgive my immaturity.”

“Oh, yeah, totally—don’t—don’t worry about it, man. I get it,” Dipper stammers, and Bill sighs in relief. 

“I’m glad,” he says earnestly, and Dipper shoots him a hesitant smile. Mabel wasn’t kidding, this guy is  _ nothing  _ like Bill Cipher. He’s polite and repentant, he’s careful, he really seems to value the well-being of those around him. Even when Bill Cipher was trying to decieve one of them he’d maintained an air of cruelty in his voice that this Bill just doesn’t seem able to match. Suddenly, Dipper feels guilt creep up in his stomach at his previous mistrust of the man. Mabel was right, he’d been jumping to conclusions and judging a book by its cover. Dipper was the jerk, not Bill.

Also, he’s tired of keeping his guard up all the time. Maybe it’s time the bitterness that has been a constant undertone in his life for the past few years be swept away. 

“Have you remembered anything else about your past yet?” Dipper asks, changing the subject. Bill’s face goes somber as he shakes his head.

“No, nothing. I know things about the world—I can remember every book I’ve read, every spell I’ve cast, how to tie my shoes, stuff like that. But whenever I try to remember who I am, or where I come from, I just come up blank.” Bill’s fingers ball into fists at his sides. 

“Wait, did you say—every spell? Were you a mage?” Dipper asks. Bill blinks a few times, brows furrowing.

“Yeah, I suppose I was. I remember how to cast the spells, I wonder if I still…” Bill trails off, marching towards the counter where he lifts a piece of scrap paper up in front of his face. He concentrates, lips pursing as he glares at the paper. “ _ Paulo flamma, _ ” he murmurs. ‘Little flame.’ It’s Latin, Dipper learned the language a few years ago when he started studying magic. 

After a few more seconds of silence, Dipper is about to suggest they try something else when the paper suddenly erupts in flame. Bill drops it, and Dipper flinches, reaching for a cup of water and throwing it over the ashy remains of the paper. 

“I can still do magic,” Bill whispers, almost reverently, as Dipper bends to mop up the mess of ash and water with a paper towel. Then his face splits into an ecstatic grin. “I can still do magic!” he cries, pumping a fist into the air. Dipper opens his mouth to congratulate him, but before he gets the chance Bill’s stance starts to waver. He stumbles forward, and Dipper lunges to catch him before he topples to the floor.

“Woah, dude, you good?” Dipper asks, righting Bill, who is clutching at his head dizzily. 

“Yeah, that just… took a lot out of me, I guess. It’s like I’m learning how to cast all over again.” He looks down at his hands, lips turning down into a frustrated frown. “How inconvenient.” 

“Hey man, don’t worry about it. I’m still figuring out magic too, so we can learn it together,” Dipper tries, gently nudging Bill with his elbow in what he hopes is a supportive gesture. 

“Wait, you know magic, too?” Bill asks. Dipper nods.

“Yeah, but I’m self-taught so my skills aren’t the most professional,” Dipper replies sheepishly. 

“Since when?” Bill suddenly looks startlingly interested in Dippers outward appearance, eyes raking over Dipper’s arms, which are tattooed in thin black ink with several warding spells and the summoning circles that he uses most frequently. 

“Uh, I started six years ago, I guess? Actually, yeah, it’s almost been six years exactly. Why do you ask?” Dipper asks warily.

“No reason in particular, just trying to gauge how long I might’ve been using magic based on you,” Bill responds flippantly, but Dipper feels like there might be more to it. He dismisses the suspicion with a shake of his head, determinedly shoving the little voice of mistrust away from the forefront of his mind. 

“Oh. Well, like I said, I’m still figuring it all out. I don’t know if I’d be the best tool to measure by.”

“Neither do I,” Bill says with a laugh. “Why don’t you try showing me what you know? I’ll try to mimic you and see if any memories resurface.”

“Oh! Okay, I’ve never really used a ton of magic in front of other people before, but it can’t hurt to try,” Dipper admits. The most he’s ever done in front of his family is discreetly reheat a lukewarm cup of coffee at breakfast, or summon the remote to his hand from across the room. Not even Mabel knows how far he’s gotten practicing magic, he doesn’t want to worry her. Magic can be tricky stuff, and the energy used to create it can often draw the attention of darker entities. It’s why he saves big magic for when he’s in the middle of the woods, far,  _ far  _ away from home. 

“Huh. Does your family know about it?” Bill asks, practically reading Dipper’s mind. He blushes and looks away.

“Uh, they know that I was  _ trying,  _ when I was a kid, but uh, no. They don’t know that I was ever successful,” Dipper sighs bashfully as Bill’s eyebrows shoot up. 

“Really? I mean, I haven’t seen much, but you and your family seem really close. Not even Mabel?” Bill asks, and Dipper shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t want to worry her. She knows that practicing magic is dangerous, we all do. But once I created my first breeze, I couldn’t stop,” Dipper feels terrible, of course, for keeping his mage status a secret from the rest of them, but he knows that if he told them about it they’d force him to stop, and he does  _ not  _ want to stop. Magic has enhanced his research tenfold; he’s received a sort of higher status among more intelligent creatures, with fairies and gnomes now regarding him with a reluctant amount of respect, and he’s uncovered a wealth of hidden messages and secret pathways simply because he knew the magic words to reveal them. Hell, in more than a few different scenarios, he might’ve been killed if it weren’t for his quick spellcasting. At this point, losing his magic would be like losing a limb. 

“Makes sense,” Bill says with a nod. There’s a silence as he seems to slip into a sort of thoughtful trance, but he blinks it away so fast Dipper starts to wonder if he’d imagined it. “Well, why don’t you get ready for the day, then we can go out into the forest and do some magic?” Bill suggests, and Dipper’s eyes dart down to his oversized black sleep shirt and plaid boxers as his face goes scarlet with embarrassment. 

“Uh, right—yeah, okay!” Dipper sputters, skipping around the corner and up the stairs to his attic room so fast he almost slips on the wet floor. 

An hour later, Dipper is standing in the middle of a clearing, his brow damp with sweat beneath his battered blue and white hat, and his muscles flickering with raw magical energy. It’s been  _ months  _ since he’s used this much magic, and it’s exhilarating. Beside him, Bill is in a similar state, grinning wickedly at the splintered remains of the redwood they’d just worked together to obliterate from the inside out. 

“I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of it again,” Bill pants. “And  _ you,  _ mister—you fucking lied to me!” He leans over and punches Dipper lightly on the arm with a little smirk. 

“How do you mean?” Dipper asks through heavy breaths. He wonders if big magic will do less of a toll on his body the more he practices, like learning a new sport or instrument, or if it’ll always do a number to him. He hopes it’ll get easier, he sure would like to be able to do stuff like this without getting so winded he can barely stand. 

“You said you’d only been practicing for six years, and yet you cast like an old master!” Bill accuses. “No bullshit, when did you  _ actually  _ learn magic?” 

“No bullshit, it’s only been six years,” Dipper replies, though his bosom swells with pride. He’d never had anything to compare to, so he’d never been able to gauge his progress in the magical arts. He’d always just kind of assumed that he’d always be a dozen steps behind what he should be, simply because he was teaching himself based on old books rather than under the tutelage of an actual mage. But hearing this, that Bill thinks he’s got the skills of an old master, it sends his excitement on a rampage. 

“The summer before I started, there was this big apocalyptic war where this demon tried to merge our dimension with this weird, chaotic inbetween dimension called the Nightmare Realm. We managed to kill the demon that started all of it, and once it was all over I thought, ‘If I can use magical summoning spells to bring demons  _ here,  _ who’s to say I can’t do the same thing, but the other way around?’ So the next summer I started researching, and sure enough, there was a book about banishing wards. From there, I learned about transmutation, spellcasting, elemental harnessing…” Dipper still remembers the first time he’d burned a hole through a dead leaf using just his concentration and a Latin phrase, it had completely blown his mind and taken every inch of his willpower not to run inside and show it to everyone in his family. “One thing led to another, and suddenly I was doing… this,” he gestures to the splintered tree with a bashful shrug. 

“ _ Fascinating, _ ” Bill whispers. He gazes at Dipper like he’s a brand new book that Bill has been looking forward to reading—there’s an excited gleam in his eye, but also a strange sort of hunger, a craving to dig deeper. Dipper knows the feeling well, clawing to uncover the secrets of his hometown, yet he still shifts under the scrutiny. “So you just… read a book that told you to say a certain thing, and when you said it, you made magic.”

“Pretty much,” Dipper says with a shrug. “Why, did I miss a step or something?” 

“No, it’s just—most people, me included, can’t just  _ do  _ magic. Usually humans need to start out with a wand or a charm of some sort to focus their energies, and even then it takes years to be able to manifest enough power to actually create something.”

“Really?” Dipper asks, and he’s almost disgusted by the hopeful lilt in his voice, because of  _ course  _ after discovering Bill’s vast knowledge of the magic arts Dipper has been transformed into an eager-to-please puppy. 

“Yes, really. I might be frightened if I wasn’t so busy being astonished.”

Dipper smiles, big and wide and bright, and Bill returns it in full. 

“What?!” Dipper cries, stumbling away as if he’s been burned.

“I said,” Bill replies with a shrug, “that I should probably be gathering my clothes and getting out of your family’s hair before it gets too dark.”

“Like hell,” Dipper snorts. “In case you’ve forgotten, not 24 hours ago you were practically delirious from dehydration and malnourishment.” They’ve spent the whole day out in the woods, practicing their magic, and only now once the sun is just starting to dip beyond the tips of the trees are they walking back to the shack. 

“But you said so yourself, I’m looking much healthier,” Bill hardly flinches, kicking a stone in their path when he responds, as if he hasn’t just been yanked from death’s door by the skin of his teeth. Dipper tries and fails to keep his expression schooled away from the incredulity he feels, mouth agape. 

“Besides,” Bill continues, “I’ve nothing to offer you all here. I don’t have any money to pay for rent or food, I don’t have any memories of particularly helpful skills or talents—other than my magic, which you and I both know I won’t be using—it just makes sense for me to leave.”

“Okay, fine. And where will you go?” Dipper challenges, and Bill’s cheeks go pink. He looks away, as if he’d been hoping Dipper wouldn’t ask that. 

“I’ll figure something out,” he mutters, and Dipper lets out a laugh, but it’s more of a wheeze.

“And until you do, you’ll stay with us, here, at the shack.”

“Dipper, I—” Bill starts to protest, but Dipper holds his hands up, resolute.

“No, look. I hate to always be the voice of reason here, but you don’t exactly have any clues as to where you’d go, even if you could given your lack of worldly experience. I didn’t drag you from the depths of one of the most dangerous woods in America just to kick you right back out again. If you’re that worried about being useful, I’m sure Stan won’t argue about having an extra set of hands helping at the gift shop—especially since he’ll be subtracting rent and food and utilities and every other expense he can squeeze out of your paycheck.” Dipper folds his arms, and god—he probably looks like he’s  _ pouting _ like a child, but he won’t lose this man to the rest of the world, not yet. Even if it's for selfish magic-related reasons, Dipper wants Bill to stick around. And when a Pines wants something hard enough, there’s little in this dimension or the next that could stand in their way.

“You really think—I mean, Stan won’t mind? Or Mabel and Pacifica? I know that they’re going back to Europe soon and all, but still. I wouldn’t want to add unnecessary tension to your family’s matters,” Bill purses his lips grimly. “It sounds like you’ve all been through enough without some amnesiac stranger barging in and making a place for himself in your lives.” 

“Trust me, man. A harmless amnesiac stranger is actually on the better side of things I could’ve brought home from the woods,” Dipper scoffs, then shudders at the memory of the wendigo he’d tried to wrangle back from terrorizing the south end of town. He still has the scar on his bicep where its bite had almost taken the muscle clean out. He’d managed to kill it eventually, but not before it got to a poor group of tourists camping just a few miles from the main town. 

Bill actually laughs at that—a full, real laugh, not like the forced chuckles Dipper has grown accustomed to—and something warm flutters around in his stomach. It vanishes just as quickly as it had come, so Dipper ignores it. 

“Alright, I suppose there’s no harm in staying just a  _ bit  _ longer,” Bill concedes. Dipper mentally fist pumps, then nods, satisfied. 

“Good. I’ll talk to Stan about getting you on the clock,” Dipper responds, and as they emerge into the clearing where the Mystery Shack stands, proud and somewhat dilapidated, he can’t help but smile. The sun’s retreat behind the horizon is finally starting to paint vibrant colors across the sky, and under its rosy glow Bill steps forward and opens the shack’s front door, gesturing for Dipper to head in first. 

“What a gentleman,” Dipper rolls his eyes as he steps inside, the door behind him making a soft clicking sound as it closes. 

“I aim to please,” Bill teases, and Dipper can’t help but feel like this might be the start of something wonderful. 

Oh, this is just  _ wonderful,  _ Bill thinks to himself, collapsing onto the lumpy bed of the shack’s guest room. Honestly, his first four days of humanhood could not have gone any better. Sure, the first two and a half had been spent wandering aimlessly through the woods with no clue as to what he might be looking for, but after that stupid Pine Tree found him and gallantly saved him from threats he’d never before needed to worry about, things are falling almost comically into place. 

Bill is beginning to treasure the shellshocked look he’d given Pine Tree the first time he introduced himself. Humans are so easily manipulated, even when the facts are right in front of their faces they’re still utterly, hopelessly optimistic. Pine Tree had actually called him  _ harmless— _ in that moment, Bill couldn’t keep himself from bursting into a fit of laughter. The poor human hadn’t even realized that it was at his expense. 

Earlier in the day, when he’d had the chance to formally introduce himself to the others, Stan had just given him a once-over and grunted, “you a demon?”

Bill pretended to be affronted, an expertly tuned quirk in his eyebrow raising in slight confusion. “Why would I be a demon?” He’d asked, oh it was too easy to convince them that he’s genuine. 

Stan had shrugged, taken a sip from his coffee, and looked away. “No reason,” he said. “I’ll go find a clean shirt for you so you don’t look like a total freak, then why don’t we all go to Greasy’s?”

The fat one cheered alongside his girlfriend—wife? Yes, wife, Bill noted, glancing at the ring on her finger. Jesus, they’re letting just  _ anyone  _ be bonded these days, aren't they?

Pine Tree—though, Bill supposes he should probably start thinking of him as Dipper, he’s not sure how well that one would go over if he accidentally slipped up—he’d been harder to convince. Bill knew from the moment he’d said it that Dipper wouldn’t be so easy to shake, especially given Bill’s yellow eyes and dubious backstory. For a moment, he wondered if he’d botched the whole operation by revealing his true name, but he’s never been referred to as anything else for trillions of years. And besides, there’s almost nothing Bill takes pleasure in more than a good challenge. After all, why would Bill Cipher reveal his true name alongside a watery-ass amnesiac excuse if he was  _ really  _ trying to manipulate them?

But then, Dipper had been surprisingly easy to disarm as well! All he had to do was compliment Dipper’s magic and offer to help him learn more, and suddenly the boy looked at Bill like he held the world. While much of Bill’s praise had just been a means to an end, he can't deny that he’d been… startled by Dipper’s magical abilities. When Bill suggested that they work together to try to rip that tree apart from the inside out, he’d been expecting to see Dipper blanch at the outlandish suggestion, and Bill would’ve basked in the boy’s expression for a few minutes before they moved on to something smaller. But instead, Dipper had just pursed his lips, nodded, held his arms up in a casting position, and glanced over at Bill as if to say,  _ well, are you gonna help me or not?  _

More surprising still was how quickly they’d managed to blow the tree to bits. In fact, Bill would almost venture to say that he’d had almost no part in doing it at all. When he was a demon, he was practically built of magical power. He could create and destroy whatever he wanted almost without thinking. Now, inside a weaker body, he needs to  _ work  _ to summon the energy required to do even the simplest of spells. He’d nearly passed out after performing a simple flame spell on that piece of paper earlier. 

And Dipper, how the hell is he even mortal? With that kind of power already after just six years of practicing, he’s practically a demon himself. Perhaps Bill will hold off on exterminating the entire Pines family bloodline, at least for a little while. That kind of magic energy contains a wealth of possibilities that Bill is hungry to harness. 

“I’m sure this isn’t how you planned all of this to go,” Bill smirks into the dark. When the Axolotl doesn’t respond, he turns his back to the wall and closes his eyes, intent on getting some real, comfortable human sleep. 

And his sleep is human, but it certainly isn’t comfortable. Before he even realizes he’s fallen asleep, he wakes with a start, drenched in sweat and heart racing so fast Bill thinks it might just leap out of his chest. He feels the ghost of a shout straining his throat, and he looks down at his hands, opening and closing his fists almost hysterically. What had been happening? He was being turned to stone—why was he being turned to stone? And now it’s all gone, where did all of it go?

“Bill?” his door opens clumsily, as a half-awake Dipper Pines stumbles into his room holding his phone as a flashlight. “Everything alright? I heard someone yelling.”

“Y-yeah,” Bill stammers. “Yes. I just… had a nightmare.” A  _ nightmare.  _ How humiliating, to have a dream demon wake trembling from a creation that might have been his own doing if he wasn’t human. 

“Oh,” Dipper slumps a little, and for the first time Bill notices the energy in the room had shifted, Dipper must’ve turned his magic up in anticipation for a fight of some kind, but now he’s relaxed it back down. Adorable. “Do you… wanna talk about it?”

Bill shakes his head. “It’s fine. I was just startled because—well, it’s going to sound silly to you, but I’d actually forgotten how it felt to have one.”

“Yikes,” Dipper winces. “Like being a little kid again. I can’t imagine.”

“Yes, well…” Bill doesn’t have a response to that, so instead he shakes his hands out, banishing the feeling of stiff stone and flashing a shaky grin. “Thank you for checking in on me, Dipper, but I’m alright.” 

So far, he’s been playing the part of the humble yet helpful wanderer, maybe somewhat in need of Dipper’s coddling, but who also has some powerful secrets he hasn’t uncovered yet. It’s yielded near miraculous results, Dipper just can’t seem to get enough of him. Bill’s got him wrapped around his little finger. 

“Okay,” Dipper says, backing out of the room. “Well, I’m just upstairs if you need me.”

“Thank you,” Bill replies. “Goodnight, Dipper.”

“‘Night,” Dipper closes the door, and the room is plunged again into darkness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry that the plot isn't moving along terribly quick, i promise the juicier stuff is coming soon ;)) until then enjoy Dipper being a hopeful fool


	4. Entanglement

“That’ll be $19.21, please,” Dipper finishes wrapping the overpriced Mystery Shack mug in an old newspaper and hands the bundle to the customer, taking their offered 20 dollar bill. He hands their change back to them, and they drop it into the tip jar. 

“Oh, thank you!” Dipper says as the woman leaves. For some reason, over the past few weeks their tip jar has been near bursting with willing offerings. 

No, not  _ for some reason.  _ Dipper knows the reason. It’s Bill. 

In just over two months, the man has claimed a spot in the customers’ hearts as the kind, charismatic salesman with a bright smile and an eager habit of telling mystical stories of the depths of the forest. He’s captivating, is what he is. Sometimes, when he starts in on one of his rants about being chased down a mountain by a pack of sparkly pink bears or beating a strapping, slippery merman in an arm wrestling match, Dipper finds himself unable to tear his eyes away, equally as engrossed as the tourist audience. 

And more than once, Bill has caught his gaze and sent him a wink and a smirk before continuing with his story without missing a beat. Unfortunately for Dipper, the look always makes him waffle a second, fumbling for his lost focus on his tasks at the register. It isn’t fair, how the man can switch from sophisticated and serious to impish and—well, if Dipper is being frank about it—downright flirtatious without batting an eye. 

The door swings open, and Dipper looks up, his peppy customer-service greeting on the tip of his tongue, but his eyes meet Bill’s swirling golden ones instead. “Oh, hey Bill,” Dipper greets, slouching back on his stool behind the register.

“Hey Dipper!” Bill chirps, skipping over to the counter and leaning against it on his elbows. “We still on for you-know-what tonight?”

“Don’t say it like  _ that,  _ man, you’ll give people the wrong idea,” Dipper laughs as Bill wiggles his eyebrows. 

“I don’t see anyone else in the shop right now, meaning there’s no one to misinterpret my innocent question except you, you filthy brained freak,” Bill laughs, and Dipper feels a blush rise to his cheeks. 

“You know what, fine. Magic tutoring session cancelled,” Dipper huffs.

“You don’t mean that,” Bill bats his eyelashes and juts out his bottom lip, which earns a sharp laugh from Dipper. 

“Fine, you called my bluff. But this is only because I’ve been dying to try out that disillusionment spell you keep talking about.  _ Not  _ because I derive pleasure from your infuriating company.”

“Wow, somebody’s been keeping up on his summer reading.”

Dipper snorts. “Charles Dickens  _ wishes  _ he was as clever and charming as me.”

Bill laughs at that, and they fall into a comfortable silence, taking in the momentary calm before Stan’s current tour group comes barging through the doors to purchase shitty, overpriced souvenirs that they’ll probably lose in a week. 

Dipper pokes plenty of fun at the man across the counter from him, but the truth is, with Mabel overseas and all his other friends a good ten or so years older than him, Dipper misses having someone to joke around with. Bill is easy to talk to, and it’s just as easy to sit and enjoy each others’ company without any words exchanged between the two of them. Dipper hasn’t ever had someone like this—someone who isn’t his twin sister, who would be forced to endure his company even if she didn’t want it. It’s almost a relief, knowing that he, a loser, can still make friends (not to mention with someone as charismatic as Bill).

He almost can’t believe that there had been a time where he didn’t trust the man. All over a silly,  _ extremely  _ common name. Now, after countless hours spent in the middle of the forest helping each other on their magic and exchanging stories, talking about anything and everything, Dipper doesn’t doubt that if it came down to it he’d trust Bill with his life. 

Bill, unfortunately, still hasn’t remembered anything from his past. They both have a few theories as to what it might be that’s blocking his brain, but none of their leads seem all too promising. It’s been deflating Dipper a bit, after everything Bill is doing to help him with his magic, provide companionship, and just overall being a genuinely good guy, Dipper can’t seem to help with anything.

But whenever he voices this insecurity, Bill reassures him over and over again that Dipper saved his life, for god’s sake, and gave him food to eat, a job, and a place to stay, among other things. And Dipper supposes that he can live with that, for now.

Just then, a gaggle of tourists come flooding through the doors, pointing excitedly to different fabricated monsters posted along the walls and checking out tacky baubles and figurines of said monsters. Bill drops his head into his hand tiredly, takes a breath, then comes back up with a brilliant smile on his face.

“I guess that’s my cue! Talk to you later, Starhead,” Bill winks, then skips out into the throng, pointing out different items and regaling the tourists with tales of their arcane properties. Dipper rolls his eyes.

“Hi, I’ll take this please,” comes a chipper voice to Dipper’s left. He looks up and sees a girl holding a glittery snow globe depicting a floral fairy house with pink glitter inside. Of course, fairies don’t live in flowers, that would be ridiculous, but it's still a pretty item. She has jet black hair pulled into a high ponytail, with sweeping bangs covering her forehead and just brushing against her eyebrows. Her eyes are blue, and her skin is pale, with rosy cheeks complimenting the red and white striped top she’s wearing. 

“Sure thing,” Dipper says, taking the snow globe and scanning the price tag. 

“That Bill guy is something else, isn’t he?” The girl asks, and Dipper follows her gaze over to where Bill is performing a card trick for a handful of children. 

“Sure is,” Dipper replies absently. “That’s gonna be $25.99, please.”

“Do you know if that guy with the weird hair is single?” The girl asks, handing Dipper a $20 and a $10. 

“He is, but I gotta warn you, he can be a real jackass sometimes,” Dipper snorts. “Here’s your change.”

“Oh, I’m not really looking for anything serious. Just some fun while I’m in town,” the girl giggles, taking the bills from Dipper. “What about you? Got any plans, say, tomorrow? 8:00?”

Dipper laughs. “I’m really sorry, but I’m a working college student. Free time is a thing of the past.” The girl smiles.

“I get it, this vacation has been my first breath of fresh air in months.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a piece of paper, scribbling a number onto it. “Well, if anything opens up, call me. I’ll be in town until Sunday morning.”

Dipper takes the number, and the girl skips out, tucking the snow globe into her purse. Dipper realizes he’s forgotten to wrap it in a newspaper, but she doesn’t seem to mind. He looks down at the number, underneath it the girl has written in loopy handwriting, ‘call me! —Sarah.’

The minutes creep by as Dipper goes into autopilot, wrapping glass in newspaper, folding shirts into bags, forcing smiles and pretending to be engrossed in each old woman’s stories about her children or her cats. But, soon enough, the gift shop is empty again, and Bill is slumping over Dipper’s register once more, looking even more tired than before. 

“Someone left this for you,” Dipper slides the paper with Sarah’s number over to Bill, not really paying attention to him. He’s too busy cursing the Shack’s archaic tech. They really should come up with a better inventory system here, Dipper thinks, scowling at the tiny numbers on the register’s screen. 

“Hm,” Bill grunts. He pushes the paper aside, barely glancing at it. 

“She was cute, you should call her.” Bill snorts.

“Well, Starhead, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly have a very fuckable backstory. Imagine me on a date—they’d be like, ‘so, Bill, tell me about your family,’ and I’d say, ‘oh, that’s the funny thing about it actually, I only have a month’s worth of memories,’ and they’d say ‘that’s weird. Let’s break up,’ and I’d say ‘good idea!’ And then it would be done.”

Dipper giggles. “Aw, come on. I’m sure it can’t be  _ that  _ bad, just to dip your toes into the water.” He picks up the paper, pushing it in front of Bill’s face. “This Sarah girl said she’s just looking for a little fling while she’s in town. No backstory necessary.”

“Okay, so what I’m hearing is: you just want me to get out of the house and get laid,” Bill says, arching one eyebrow. “At least I still remember how to do all that.”

“God—I don’t—I don’t need to know the details,” Dipper wrinkles his nose as Bill cackles. “I mean, it couldn’t hurt. All you’re ever doing here is working, and when you’re not working you’re just talking to me. It’s gotta get boring at some point.”

“Maybe,” Bill says dismissively, but he does take the paper and tuck it into his back pocket, which is a start. He opens his mouth to day something else, but then his nose wrinkles. “What’s that smell?”

Dipper looks up, sniffing, and—oh. Axe body spray, cigarettes, and cheap hair gel, quickly approaching. Dipper sighs.

“Where’s Marina?” A rough voice asks, and through the doors of the Mystery Shack gift shop comes the familiar face of Robbie Valentino. 

Now in his mid-twenties, Robbie’s acne has cleared up to give way to a sharp, angry face. He still does his hair in much the same way as he did when he was 16, and his terrible posture hasn’t changed in the slightest. He’s filled in a bit more, awkward angles disappearing into more confident ones, his black hoodie now covering broader shoulders and extending down longer arms. He’s gotten tall, almost Bill’s size at full height, bringing him to around 6’2. But the unhealthy slouch of his shoulders takes a good half foot off his size, making him look much less imposing than he probably thinks he is. Dipper rolls his eyes. 

“She’s in the back, her break doesn’t start for another ten minutes,” Dipper explains. Robbie’s beady black eyes narrow on Bill, who has schooled his previously disgusted face into a completely neutral one—an impressive feat, especially considering this is his first time experiencing the Robbie Smell. 

“Who the hell is that?” Robbie spits in Bill’s direction. Bill straightens and saunters over, extending his hand. 

“The name’s Bill, pleasure to meet you,” Bill lies, and Dipper has to hold back a laugh. 

“Robbie,” he grunts, taking Bill’s hand. It’s significantly smaller than Bill’s, and as they shake his arm wobbles like a noodle. Charming. 

“Robbie? Is that you?” says a squeaky voice. All eyes turn to Marina, who skips out from the back room and throws her arms around Robbie’s neck, peppering him with kisses and shoving Bill aside in the process. 

“Hey babe, you ready to go?” Robbie asks. Marina checks her watch. She’s a pretty high school junior with fluffy pink hair and a face powdered in makeup fit for the runway. She’s been working for the shack since their other worker after Wendy—Charlie—went off to college at Boulder. She’s also just barely turned 16. 

“Uhh, I still have like, five minutes…” Marina sighs, then turns to Dipper with big brown puppy eyes. “Can I go? Pwetty pwease?”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Dipper shrugs. It’s not like she was really doing anything except going on her phone anyways, now that the tourists have cleared out. Marina squeals in delight then takes Robbie’s hand, dragging him out the front door, which Robbie slams much harder than is strictly necessary. Dipper rolls his eyes.

Bill scowls and wipes his hand on his pants. “His hands were  _ super  _ clammy.”

“Yeah, well. That’s Robbie for you,” Dipper sighs. Something passes over Bill’s face, and he looks at Dipper in alarm. 

“Wait, isn’t Marina—”

“Sixteen.”

“And Robbie is—”

“Twenty three.”

Bill makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. 

“Yeah, ever since his old girlfriend, Tambry, told him that she didn’t want to go long distance with him in college, he’s been preying on minors who don’t know any better than to feel special that an adult is into them. He knows that women his age aren’t as impressed by him so he does… that.” Dipper gestures out the window, where Robbie has Marina pinned against the side of his van, sloppily making out with her. 

“What a creep,” Bill growls. 

“No kidding.”

Then the doors open, and a man walks up to Dipper and asks if he’d look better in the puma shirt or the panther shirt, and Bill turns on that dazzling smile, and it all begins again. 

Just before Bill crumples to the ground, he barks out a sharp laugh. Then the spell hits him square in the chest, his eyes roll to the back of his head, his legs wobble then give out beneath him, and Dipper’s heart stutters a beat before resuming at twice its usual pace in order to make up for the lost time. 

“Bill!” Dipper cries, sprinting over to the man across the clearing. The clearing has expanded almost twice in size since the two of them started training, with the ruined remains of a few dozen trees destroyed in all manner of ways scattered across the forest floor. The trees that have survived so far aren’t much better off, donning scorch marks, gouges, and in a few cases, extra limbs or twice as many leaves as before. 

Dipper falls to his knees in front of Bill, who is still laughing, though weakly. 

“ _ Subsum,  _ Dipper,” he murmurs, “not  _ somnum _ .” 

“What?” Dipper puts his hand against Bill’s forehead, feeling for any changes in body temperature. That’s usually one of the first signs of a spell gone wrong, the victim’s body will go very hot or very cold. 

“Hide, sleep,” Bill manages, and his voice is getting quieter and quieter. “Sleep,” he says, and it's barely a whisper, then his body goes limp in Dipper’s arms. 

Oh. 

Dipper messed up the spell. He’d said the wrong word, and cast a sleeping charm on the man rather than a minor disillusionment spell. Dipper feels anger and guilt, a hot mess of swirling emotions, start working its way into a knot in his stomach. They’d been practicing the spell for a few weeks now, Dipper should’ve nailed it. 

But it had been his first time practicing on another human target, and just before he cast the spell Bill had tilted his head down, smiling at Dipper in a way that was almost  _ predatory,  _ which for some reason set his nerves ablaze. Those entrancing yellow eyes had almost reminded him of an old foe, long defeated, and something mysteriously akin to butterflies shot up in his stomach. He’d gotten distracted.

And now the sky is growing dark, which means that more creatures will be attracted to the residual magical energies in the clearing, and Bill is unconscious and won’t be waking up soon, no matter how many times Dipper tries shaking him awake, and Dipper is thoroughly  _ fucked.  _

“Shit.” Dipper hisses. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,  _ shit _ !” He reaches for his backpack, knowing that he’s left most of his herbs at home, including the ones to make magical smelling salts, because these lessons are usually focused on verbal and mental mediums of magic, not physical. Still, he needs to try  _ something.  _ He hadn’t been intending to cast a sleeping spell, which means that he didn’t have any specific time parameters in mind. Bill could be asleep for a minute or a month. 

Dipper feels the color drain from his face at the thought.  _ Stupid,  _ he’s so stupid. 

He’s flipping through his journal desperately, cursing himself over and over again, when he catches a faint flash of white in the corner of his eye. He looks up just in time for a light breeze to blow the thing—a piece of paper—into his face. 

“Ow—what…?” Dipper pulls the paper away, squinting at it in the dark. It’s written in a handwriting he doesn’t recognize, with an ink as red as blood. 

“ _ et ortum est homo, sicut in aranea telam in ventum, _ ” Dipper murmurs the Latin aloud, sounding out the vowels, trying to remember what  _ aranea  _ might mean. 

He reads it again, louder this time, and that’s when his vision flickers with a bright, fluorescent blue. He starts, staggering back. What  _ was  _ that? Lightning? A hallucination? And why does his head feel so fuzzy? Why is his body so cold?

Dipper shivers and clutches at his hair, willing the static inside his brain to go away. Honestly, he should know better than to just read random Latin inscriptions on papers he finds blowing around the forest.  _ Stupid, stupid, stupid.  _

He opens his eyes, which he hadn’t noticed were scrunched shut in the first place, and he sees Bill… hovering four feet in the air.

His unconscious body is surrounded by a faint blue glow, almost identical to the flash Dipper had seen after reading the spell, and he’s just… floating there. 

Dipper staggers to his feet, and Bill rises. When Dipper takes a step forward, Bill floats a step forward. When Dipper backs away, Bill follows. 

“Weird…” Dipper murmurs, and his vision flickers with the blue again, like a glitch. He winces, putting his hand up to his eyes, and when he pulls it away it almost looks like his hand is glitching as well. But it returns to normal before Dipper can question it, and the staticky pressure inside his head is growing greater with every passing second. He might only have so long with this spell, so he gathers his things—including the strange piece of paper—and starts stumbling out the clearing. Glancing behind him, he sees Bill’s prone form follows. 

The hike back to the shack is one of the longest of his life, as every couple seconds his vision will go white for longer and longer periods of time, and each time it does, he stumbles, nearly forgetting what he’s doing. 

One step at a time, one step at a time. That’s all he needs. One step at a time. 

One step at a time. 

Another flash, this one lasting nearly 30 seconds. 

When his vision clears, he looks down at his body, but instead he sees a stranger. Who is he? What’s he doing?

Then he sees Bill floating behind him, and he remembers. 

Right. I’m Dipper. One step at a time. 

One step at a time. 

Another flash. 

It goes on like this for what might be hours before they finally break past the treeline surrounding the shack. Dipper runs—or, he tries to—for the door, guiding Bill inside. The house is quiet and dark, but the glow coming from Bill’s body helps illuminate the way to Bill’s room. 

He coaxes Bill’s body over the bed, getting him as close to the mattress as he can before he stutters out a strained, “ _ finite. _ ” The glow around Bill’s body melts away, and Bill drops onto the mattress like a stone through water. 

Dipper moans—literally  _ moans _ —as the pressure recedes from his brain, and he collapses onto the bed beside Bill, exhausted. 

His limbs feel fuzzy and numb, like he’s been injected with anaesthetic, and he shivers, he feels like  _ ice.  _ He curls into himself, pressing his body against the warmth of Bill’s sleeping form, and  _ oh,  _ that feels nice.

He should get up, he really should. He made it through the woods while maintaining a freaky spell, he should be able to make it up the stairs to his own room with his own bed. 

He tries to lift his head from the mattress, and that’s the last thing he remembers doing before his vision goes black and he falls into an exhausted sleep. 

There are many things that Bill is expecting to see when he wakes up. This is not one of them. 

It had been so  _ funny  _ when Dipper messed up the spell, he’d been so anxious to try it out that he’d messed up the words, and the stricken look on his face had been enough to send Bill giggling. He’d been so busy laughing at Dipper’s mistake that he wasn’t even thinking about what Dipper would do to bring him home. 

Worst case scenario? He wakes up still in the clearing, with bite marks from various mythological beasts gouged into his flesh.

Best case scenario? He wakes up in his bed, unharmed, because Dipper managed to teleport them home. But of course, the best case scenario is always highly unlikely (especially considering Bill never taught Dipper how to teleport), so as Bill rises to consciousness, he braces himself for the worst. 

Instead of finding his limbs ripped off, or his body bruised and bleeding, he finds… warmth. 

He’s warm. Too warm. 

Bill’s eyes flutter open, and he grimaces at the bright light coming from his bedroom window. He lifts an arm to shield his face from the golden glow, only to find it pinned down by something soft and warm. 

It’s Dipper. 

The boy is curled up beside Bill, still wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when they were in the clearing. One of Dipper’s arms is thrown around Bill’s waist, the other is tucked under his head, which is positioned right by Bill’s heart. His legs are tangled up with Bill’s, and his nose is buried in Bill’s chest so he can’t see Dipper’s face. Dipper’s shoulders rise and fall gently with each of his breaths, and Bill can feel every single one. 

He was not expecting this. 

“Hey, Dipper,” Bill murmurs, gently shaking his arm out from under the boy’s body. His breathing changes, and Dipper makes a tiny,  _ adorable  _ noise of protest, like a vulnerable little lamb. “Dipper. Wake up,” Bill commands, louder this time. Dipper nestles closer to Bill’s chest.

“Mabel, go away,” he groans, “five more minutes…” Bill rolls his eyes.

“I'm not Mabel, I’m Bill. And you’re sleeping on my arm.”

Dipper seems to still at that, and Bill imagines him blearily opening his eyes, blinking away the sleep. Then he stiffens and sits bolt upright, whirling around to face Bill, face beet red. 

“Oh my god, I’m sorry—I don’t—” he stammers, staggering off the bed where Bill remains, nonchalant, and Dipper’s blushing like a  _ virgin _ . “I don’t know what I was… thinking…” he trails off strangely, and Bill quirks an eyebrow as Dipper seems to inspect his arms, searching for something. But he shakes his head, obviously banishing whatever he was thinking, and looks back up at Bill with a blush still staining his cheeks. 

“It’s alright, Starhead. Now I get to tell Mabel that you slept with me. I’m sure she’ll have a hayday with that information,” Bill says with a smirk, and Dipper’s blush intensifies. 

“No we—! Don’t—don’t say it like that,” Dipper sputters. “You like innuendos too much.”

“Alas, guilty as charged,” Bill drawls, finally sitting up on the bed. He looks around the room and at his own body, impressed to find it all relatively unscathed. There’s barely a pine needle in his hair, and those little shits are  _ everywhere  _ in this town. “So, are you gonna tell me how you managed to get us home after that little slip-up, or are we gonna brush it under the rug like you do with our undeniable sexual tension?” Bill asks, one because he’s a jackass who likes to make painfully heterosexual mortals (Dipper in particular) squirm, and two because he’s genuinely curious as to how the boy managed to bring them back. It wouldn’t be the first time Dipper had dragged Bill, unconscious, through the forest, but it had been almost dark when Dipper messed up that disillusionment charm. Spending that much time alone in the forest at night with a limp passenger drugged up from a sleeping spell should’ve been like a beacon to the sinister magical creatures of Gravity Falls. 

Dipper’s blush, finally beginning to subside, flares up again in full, and he shoots Bill a glare. “Just for that snarky little comment, I’m not gonna tell you.” 

“Aw, come on. That isn’t fair, you put me under an accidental sleeping curse. I think I’m owed at least an explanation.” 

Dipper sighs in defeat. “You’re right. And I’m sorry, for botching the charm. That was  _ extremely  _ stupid of me.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it, kid. You could have said  _ sonorus,  _ which would’ve made me start screaming for no reason. Imagine explaining  _ that  _ to Stan.”

“At least screaming you would’ve been able to walk home,” Dipper says tiredly. He looks down at his hands again, then shoves them resolutely into his pockets. 

“Yeah, actually, what happened there? I don’t see any dirt, so you couldn’t have dragged me back…” Bill leaves the end of the sentence open, raising his eyebrows at Dipper. 

“You’re right. I didn’t drag you, I sort of… hovered you?”

“Really? Using what spell?” Bill doesn’t remember ever teaching Dipper any suspension charms. He knows that he can perform minor summoning spells, like bringing a rock to his hand from across a clearing, but those can only be used to bring things to the caster, not to an alternate location through the forest. And the spell Dipper knows only works on objects he could reasonably throw with one hand, so he couldn’t have walked back to the shack and tried summoning Bill to him. 

Dipper rummages through his bag and procures a piece of parchment with a scribbled inscription in red. “This thing sort of… blew into my face? I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, so it couldn’t have come from one of my journals. It was probably stupid of me to read it, but I was confused and just sort of cast it without thinking.” He hands the paper over to Bill, who takes it and scans his eyes over it. 

He’s barely three words in when he realizes what spell it is, and he swears he feels the blood drain completely from his face. 

“You cast  _ web in the wind _ ?!” Bill cries. 

“If that’s what that spell is, then yes. I did.” 

Bill can’t believe it. Of course Dipper fell asleep the moment he got home, Bill doesn’t even know how this kid is still  _ alive,  _ let alone standing in front of him, having a normal conversation. Despite some dark bags under his eyes, he literally looks no worse for wear. 

“Was that… a bad thing?” Dipper asks tentatively, but Bill is still busy gaping at him. Finally he takes a deep breath in through his nose, crumpling the paper with the spell up in his fist. 

“Dipper, this spell… it’s one of the most complicated, roundabout methods of transportation ever created. It was invented in the early days of magic, when people still thought that spells needed to be complex, with specific incantations outlining specific circumstances with specific symbolism,” Bill tosses the paper into the wastebasket, taking another deep, calming breath. “It usually takes a zodiac of mages to perform, which is  _ stupid  _ and  _ impractical  _ for minor spells. You probably would’ve had an easier time trying to teleport us there using just the sheer force of your will.”

“Really?” Dipper asks, but it’s not lilted with the same shy pride the word often is, coming from his mouth. In fact, the boy looks rather sick to his stomach. Bill nods grimly. 

“You said that paper just… blew into your direction? And you didn’t recognize the handwriting?” Bill clarifies. Dipper nods. God, how  _ idiotic  _ can a mortal get?! Of course, he probably couldn’t have expected the spell to work the very first time he’d read it aloud, but for some reason Dipper is a freak with freakish magical abilities. Whoever sent that spell probably knew just as much, which means they must’ve been watching them for some time.

Great. Now Bill has to deal with an attempted assasination. Just perfect.

“ _ Web in the wind  _ is designed in such a way—it’s like trying to rip a mansion into wood chips using just your bare hands. It takes an enormous amount of magic, yet it’s extremely slow and extremely inefficient.” Bill stands up, grabbing Dipper’s wrists perhaps a little too tightly, but he  _ needs  _ to drill this into the stupid kid’s skull. “That spell was meant to kill you, Dipper. I’m sure of it.”

“What?! But—but who—why would anyone want to kill me?!” Dipper cries, trying to pull away, but Bill just grips his wrists tighter, forcing Dipper to meet his eye. 

“I don’t know, probably someone who recognizes your magical potential and is threatened by it.” After a second of thought, Bill adds, “and I’ll bet it was the same person or thing that took my memories. There’s a good chance they’re connected.”  _ Nice.  _ Weave it into your narrative, Bill. Make the best of a bad situation. 

“Fuck,” Dipper breathes, and he looks frighened enough to Bill’s satisfaction, so he releases his wrists and leans back onto one foot, crossing his arms. 

“Tell me exactly what happened when you cast that spell, Dipper. Spare no details,” Bill says, and he uses his strongest authoritative voice—the one that all but forces anyone around him to submit and obey. Dipper swallows and nods. Good.

“Well, I saw the paper, and I just kinda mumbled it under my breath, because I was still working on sounding out the syllables. I couldn’t remember what  _ aranea  _ meant, so I was trying to remember how to pronounce it, when all of a sudden my vision just went white. But that only lasted for a second, and then it flickered away, and my head felt… pressured. Like my brain was imploding from all sides. I was rubbing at my head, realizing how dumb it was to just  _ read  _ a spell without thinking about it, when I looked over and just saw you floating there. Surrounded in this faint blue light, kinda like the one that flooded my vision when I first said the spell. I stood up, and I realized that wherever I moved, you moved along with me. So I thought, ‘no time to think about it, just move,’ and started walking. But…” 

Dipper looks down and kicks at something on the floor, averting Bill’s gaze. 

“But…?” Bill prompts. 

“But… well, it was super weird, but like, once every few minutes, my vision would flash with that same bright white light. And when it did, my head felt ten times worse, and I’d temporarily forget who I was and what I was doing. It was like…” Dipper shudders and shakes his head. “It was like I just  _ became  _ whatever that light was. Like there was no more Dipper left, only the light. But then I’d look around and I’d see you, just floating there, and I’d remember.” Dipper’s eyes widen. “You don’t think they were trying to erase my memory, do you? I mean, if this came from the same thing that took yours, it would make sense, right?”

It would make sense, if Bill actually had amnesia. But instead, it just raises more questions. Bill frowns. 

“That sounds about right,” Bill says neutrally. “And when you got back home, you just dropped me here and passed out?”

Dipper nods. “Pretty much. Right when I said  _ finite,  _ the pressure was gone, but I still felt so cold and numb, I could barely move. So I guess I just…” he shrugs, as if that’s all Bill needs to know. 

“Wait, you didn’t mention that you were cold,” Bill says. “When did that start?”

“Oh, right. It happened right when I said the incantation. I guess I kinda forgot it among all the other weird symptoms,” Dipper admits sheepishly. Bill’s eyes narrow. 

“So your body temperature dropped, the  _ telltale  _ sign of a fucked up spell, and you just went on your merry little way, wandering through the forest and forgetting who you were every couple minutes. Is this what you’re trying to tell me?”

Dipper blushes, and it’s a crime that Bill is too angry to find it funny. 

“Why didn’t you just  _ finite  _ it right then, Dipper?” Bill sighs incredulously, throwing his hands into the air and turning away from the boy so he isn’t tempted to slaughter him right then and there. “It’s like you  _ wanted  _ to get killed!”

“I didn’t! Honestly, it was just the smallest of my worries right then. I barely noticed it until after.” Dipper sounds terribly guilty and small, and Bill smiles at that. At least he’ll have this little knot clawing at his insides for a few months. He’ll probably be too scared to speak for a while. That’ll show him. 

“Alright! Alright. We’ll investigate this more later,” Bill growls.

“But—”

“No buts, Starhead. Your Calc class starts in 20 minutes, which means that you need to be in the car in five.” Dipper’s face goes pale, and he lunges for his bag, throwing his books and a pen into it. 

“Shit, you’re right!”

“While you’re at school, I’ll do some more research about that spell and what you might’ve gotten wrong or what could have sabotaged it. We’ll reconvene tonight—you aren’t working, are you?”

“No, I—I have tonight off because I needed to study,” Dipper says miserably. “I guess Ancient Literature can wait, I’m not falling behind in that class.”

“Good. I’m not working either, so we’ll do more research together then.” Bill follows Dipper into the kitchen, where he scoops a handful of papers and his open Calculus binder into his backpack, irreversibly crumpling a good portion of his homework in the process. He opens his hand and summons the car keys from across the room, throwing them into his pocket and sprinting for the door. 

“Okay, sounds like a plan—god, I’m so stupid. I’m so fucking  _ stupid, _ ” Dipper curses, looking furious for a moment before drooping his shoulders in self-loathing defeat. And normally it would be a good look on him, in fact it’s exactly what Bill likes to see. But something compels him to reach out as Dipper storms past and grab his wrist, stopping him. 

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it. You were only trying to help,” Bill says gently, and for once he finds he doesn’t need to fabricate the tone. Probably because Dipper’s guilt will get annoying. Yeah, that’s it, Bill doesn’t want the kid to start pouting like a baby. That’s why he’s comforting him. “And thank you. For bringing me back in one piece. You did very well.”

Dipper sends him a shaky smile. “Thanks,” he mumbles, and he still doesn’t look like he’s quite forgiven himself, but the dark shadow over his brow is lessened significantly. Bill lets go of Dipper’s wrist and gives him a little shove on the shoulder, leaning against the doorframe. 

“Now go, you’re gonna be two minutes late at this rate.”

“Shit!” Dipper whizzes through the living room and into the entry, throwing the front door open so quickly Bill worries if it’ll come off its hinges. “Bye, Bill!” he shouts, then slams the door and runs to his car—a beaten down Bronco with a bright red interior that smells like dust and Old Spice. 

Bill watches the car careen down the dirt driveway, engine roaring, and finds his lips are curved up in a tiny smile, even though there’s nobody around that he’d need to perform it for.

How peculiar. 

When Dipper gets home from school, he finds Bill holed up in his room, pouring over page after page, book after book, scribbling notes and scratching his hair, which is a rumpled mess of blond and black. Dipper just stands in the doorway for a moment, watching it all unfold. 

He’s never seen Bill this anxious. Usually all swagger and suave, the man hasn’t acted anything but 100% confident in everything he does since the first time they spoke that night nearly three months ago. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s been so long since Bill came into their lives, but then at times like this, when Dipper finds Bill in a state so oddly domestic, it’s harder to imagine a time without him. 

“Bill?” Dipper taps a tentative knock on the open door to announce his presence. Bill’s head jerks up and he turns to Dipper, a wild look in his eyes. 

“Thank  _ god  _ you’re back, Starhead,” he groans, and that sure isn’t the greeting Dipper was expecting. Then Bill’s face darkens. “Were you taught to write in a  _ cave _ ?” He all but snarls. That’s more like it.

Bill throws one of Dipper’s journals at his chest with a disgusted sigh. Dipper just barely manages to snap his hand up in time to catch it. “Your handwriting is almost harder to decipher than the shack’s inventory system.”

“Sorry,” Dipper winces. “I never really wrote those notebooks with anyone but myself in mind.”

“Clearly.” Bill deadpans. 

“Have you found anything helpful?” Dipper ignores him and walks over to the desk, leaning his elbows against it and peering at the various research materials scattered over its surface. 

“Kinda,” Bill grunts. “I can’t find anything that might’ve triggered the release of any types of creatures that match our symptoms, but I think I might know a way that we can investigate it ourselves.” He scrubs his face with one hand, obviously exhausted. Dipper worries his bottom lip between his teeth as another flare of guilt licks its way up from his stomach. None of this would be happening if he hadn’t messed up that spell, if he’d been better at magic, if he’d learned it the  _ proper  _ way through wands and talismans rather than just starting with verbal incantations right off the bat, if, if, if.

Dipper starts as a warm hand closes over his mouth, pinching his cheeks.

“Hey, stop it.” Bill keeps his hand over Dipper’s mouth, long fingers wrapped firmly around his face. And is it just Dipper or is Bill’s hand  _ electric  _ hot? “I can see you tearing yourself apart on the inside, it’s annoying. None of this is your fault. If anything, it’s mine. I’m sure I must’ve done something to piss off whatever creature is after you, otherwise it wouldn’t have wiped my memory and ditched me in the middle of a forest.”

Dipper is inexplicably frozen in place, but it doesn’t feel in any way magical. He can only stare as he feels his cheeks heat up beneath Bill’s fingertips. Bill quirks an eyebrow. 

“We’re gonna figure this out, okay? Together. So no more taking the guilt for both of us onto yourself. Do you understand? Show me you understand.”

Dipper blinks, then slowly, he bobs his head in a nod. Bill’s hand doesn’t once move from its place around his mouth, but he smiles a crooked smile.

“Good,” he says pleasantly, and when he releases his hold from Dipper’s face the boy lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. And for some reason, Dipper’s stomach swirls with something hot and bubbling. Why did  _ that  _ of all things set butterflies off? It’s probably because he’s dizzy from holding his breath. That makes the most sense. 

“Now, are you ready to listen to my idea, or not?” Bill asks. 

“Y-yes, yeah, let’s hear it,” Dipper clears his throat after his voice wavers on the first word, and he nods. 

“Okay. So while I was researching, I remembered this one spell that I think was created by the witches in Salem just before the trials started. It was originally used by the  _ real  _ witches to identify the magical properties in different plants, but eventually the common folk discovered that it could be used to detect the auras of supposed witches. From there, it developed into this sort of magical set of goggles that, once cast, can reveal the lingering auras of pretty much any creature you can imagine.”

Dipper’s heart stutters, a sinking realization creating a pit in his stomach. 

Bill continues, “I’m thinking, if we take the spell to the clearing and cast it, it’ll show us what and where the creature might be.” He doesn’t seem to notice Dipper’s revelation, most likely too tired to be paying attention. 

“Any creature?” Dipper voices his thoughts, trying to keep the shakiness from his words. Bill shrugs.

“Dwarf, elf, wendigo, demon, you name it. If it has a distinct magical aura, this spell will detect and expose it.”

Dipper’s body goes hot with anxious adrenaline. Those are the words he’d been simultaneously dreading and hoping for. If he casts these magic goggles, he’ll be able to see the exact nature of any creature within sight. He could see which trees housed nymphs, whether the birds flying high overhead are harpies or gryphons. He’d be able to tell ordinary deer apart from those weird Gravity Falls ones with human hands for tongues. 

He’d be able to tell innocent amnesiac strangers apart from lying, manipulative demons sharing a name.

“Let’s do it,” Dipper says, as smoothly as he can. 

“You sure? It’s a lot of work, seriously, it’s gonna take at least a week to prepare—maybe two, now that I’m thinking about it…” Bill taps his chin thoughtfully, pulling on a piece of paper and scribbling a few more notes down. “Yeah, about two and a half weeks. It’s a messy spell, considering how many things it can pinpoint. We’ll need to get some freaky ingredients, make dangerous potions. It’ll be too much for my magic in the beginner state it's in, so you’ll be the one doing most of the heavy lifting. You think you can handle it?”

Dipper nods. He honestly isn’t sure—in fact, he’s terrified—but when will a chance like this to prove Bill’s innocence come around again? Right from the moment Bill described the spell, Dipper’s resolve was hardened, absolute. “Yeah, I can do it. Let’s get started.” 

Bill raises his eyebrows. “Now? I’m pretty sure your Grunkle is making dinner, he’ll be pissed if no one is here to eat it.”

Dipper deflates a little. “You’re right. Okay, after dinner.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bill nods and stands up, stretching. Dipper watches in horrified fascination as Bill twists, back cracking sickeningly. He stretches his arms over his head, and Dipper catches himself staring at the exposed strip of golden skin beneath the hem of Bill’s shirt. He scowls at himself and turns to leave the room. How cliché. 

All throughout dinner Dipper’s stomach is churning. Soon he’ll be performing a spell that, according to Bill, will be incredibly taxing on his magic. And if that isn’t nerve wracking enough, the results of said spell have the potential to change his whole world. 

Even if he casts it and finds out that Bill really is just an ordinary human, what if they can’t find any auras about whatever creature sent  _ web in the wind  _ to Dipper? If that happens, it’ll be another two weeks of preparing before they’ll be able to cast it again, and who knows what kinds of attacks it’ll send to them during that time? 

And if he turns to Bill and sees him glowing with demonic energy—well, what then? He hates to admit it, but he’s grown… strangely fond of the amnesiac stranger. He’s more than just a magic teacher, he’s become one of Dipper’s closest friends. And Dipper is equally as loath to admit that he still holds some suspicion of the man, despite all logical signs pointing to Bill Cipher’s permanent banishment from this plane of existence. It really isn’t fair of Dipper to be so critical of Bill after all he’s done to prove himself innocent, but then again, the yellow eyes? Really?

An old, vicious voice in his brain hisses,  _ trust no one.  _

Dipper frowns. His gaze fixes on the man seated across the table from him, with dark bags beneath his bright golden eyes, a gentle smile pressed over gleaming white teeth. Bill compliments Stan’s spaghetti, then tucks into his heaping plate with vigor, as if he hasn’t eaten properly in days. Beneath the table, his foot taps absently at Dipper’s leg, his long limbs uncontrollable in their sprawl. 

Dipper twirls his spaghetti into a small bite, chewing it slowly. His throat is oddly tight.

The next day, their spell preparation continues in earnest. Dipper wakes Bill early in the morning with a mug of thick black coffee and an armful of books, which he dumps loudly onto Bill’s already overflowing desk with a thud. The night before, Bill had written out the necessary steps for performing the identification spell, and Dipper had taken that list and worked long into the night researching possible hiding places for some of the more unusual ingredients to the different potions they’d need. 

The spell worked much like the zodiac they’d tried to use to ban Bill when he’d almost taken over the whole mortal plane, with a large circular ward containing multiple symbols and items that needed to be set over said symbols, each one representing a different type of magical signature that could be identified with the spell. The ward needed to be drawn into the ground where the spell would be performed using precision white fire—a spell Bill would start teaching Dipper soon—and it needed to be at least six feet in diameter. It’s all very complicated, but Dipper has done a commendable job at taking it all in without getting too worked up. 

Bill is still tearing himself up trying to figure out just who or what could be behind the assassination attempt against Dipper. To the kid, it’s just another mystery waiting to be solved, he probably doesn’t even realize just how rare this kind of thing is, even for Gravity Falls.  _ Web in the wind,  _ Bill hasn’t heard that name in millenia. Whoever sent it his way is undoubtedly a being as ancient as Bill, possibly even more. Among his Demonic colleagues, Bill is considered childish, dramatic even, for his ‘obsession’ with the mortal plane. Most ancient lifeforms want nothing to do with the fleeting nature of humanity, which makes it all the more puzzling that one would care intensely enough about the fate of a mortal to try and kill him. Whoever it is might be an old enemy of Bill’s—one who would happily stand in the way of him regaining his powers while he’s in this vulnerable human state.

He can worry about the Axolotl’s mission later, he’s got plenty of time and this is much more important. 

“C’mon sleepyhead, it’s research time,” Dipper prods at Bill’s cheek, which is smashed into his pillow. “I found this old map to a supposed mermaid cave down by the lake, which might have some of those mershrooms for the sixth house in the spell…” Dipper prattles. Bill watches the horrid curl of his spine as he peers over his research, the kid’s posture is worse than a goblin’s. Dipper’s long eyelashes catch some of the sun’s early morning glow, drooping sleepily over his pink cheeks. 

Bill smirks at the memory of yesterday evening, when he’d held those cheeks in one hand, covering the boy’s worried frown beneath his palm. Dipper’s face had gone as red as a cherry—especially, Bill notes with no small amount of glee, after being given sharp commands. Whether he’s conscious of it or not, some part of Dipper seems to go still and submit whenever Bill demands it. And, okay, Bill knows that it’s human custom not to play with your food, and this does  _ not  _ change the fact that Dipper will die by his hand once he figures out which ancient creature is creeping through Gravity Falls, but who says he can’t have a bit of fun while he’s here? If Dipper is so eager—almost  _ pliant _ —for Bill, who is he to deny the kid? 

“Bill? Are you even listening to me?” Dipper huffs. Bill blinks tiredly and shakes his head.

“No, sorry. Too distracted by that delicious little bubble butt of yours, kid,” Bill’s grin widens as Dipper’s face goes scarlet and he turns so his body is protected from Bill’s hungry gaze behind a stack of books and scrolls. 

“You’re insufferable,” Dipper growls.

“You’re in denial,” Bill sing-songs, then frowns when a heavy orange envelope is thrown in his face as a response. He picks it up and opens it, peering inside. “What’s this?”

“It’s everything I could find for the first house. I’ve also got envelopes for the third through seventh, but nothing substantial for two, eight, or nine,” Dipper explains. Sure enough, when Bill pulls a thick folder from the envelope, he finds several page’s worth of notes in Dipper’s scrawl, paper-clipped with drawings and diagrams of the different flora of Gravity Falls required to fill up the first section of the spell’s ward about magical plants. 

“How much sleep did you get last night, Starhead?” Bill murmurs, closing the folder and tucking it back into the envelope between a hand-bound botanical sketchbook guide and a ziplock bag full of soft green pine tree leaves. 

Dipper shrugs, as if that’s an answer, and splays out the other five envelopes over the desk. An old coffee mug from the night before falls off the side with a clatter. 

“Dipper,” Bill tries again, dropping the pitch of his voice a bit lower. “Did you stay up all night doing this?” Dipper bites his lip, avoiding Bill’s gaze. 

“Look, I’m sorry, I just—I don’t like to sleep when I’m working on something. I don’t like wasting time. This spell is gonna take long enough for us to prepare as it is, and that thing could strike any second with another attempt at murdering you, or me, or even my family, and I just—I don’t want to be sitting in sweet relaxation if—when—that happens. If I’m not doing everything I can to prevent that then I’m basically saying, ‘here, take the people I care about, whatever.’ So, no. I didn’t sleep last night. I don’t think I could’ve, even if I tried,” Dipper blurts. Afterwards the room is silent, apart from the soft sounds of tourists chattering in the distant main part of the Mystery Shack. 

Bill waits a few seconds before sitting up, tossing his blanket from his body and exposing his sweatpant-clad legs to the chill morning air. Then, he reaches a long finger out and pokes Dipper in the side of the head. Dipper staggers back, almost falling into the desk chair behind him.

“Hey—what the hell, man?” Dipper whines, rubbing where Bill had prodded him. 

“Exactly as I thought. So you’re telling me that you think you’ll be more  _ efficient  _ like this? All I had to do was  _ poke  _ you and you were stumbling around like a newborn foal without a head. What makes you think you’ll be able to cast anything at all in your state?” Bill asks. Dipper opens his mouth to protest, but it’s immediately overcome by a gaping yawn. Bill rolls his eyes and lunges forward, scooping the boy into his arms bridal-style. 

“Wh—put me down!” Dipper stammers, pushing against Bill’s iron grip, but the human form Bill’s inherited has been blessed with a fair amount of strength. Either that, or Dipper really is just as light as a pile of daisies. He really should be eating more, Bill thinks, as he climbs the stairs to Dipper’s attic bedroom. 

He kicks the door open and marches over to the lumpy bed shoved into a corner, which is covered in more books, pens, and diagrams. Bill brushes them aside with a small incantation, stacking everything into a pile on the ground by Dipper’s desk. 

“Bill, I’m not a  _ child,  _ just put me down already—ow!” Dipper’s growl is cut short as Bill drops him onto the bed without any gentleness, already moving to close the curtain over the attic’s charming triangular window. 

“No more research until you’ve had at least a four hour nap. Then, tonight, you’re getting your full eight hours, no questions asked. Understand?” Bill instructs. 

“ _ Four  _ hours?! But it’ll be almost noon by then! That’s half of today’s daylight!” Dipper protests, moving to get out of the bed, so Bill steps forward and pushes him down into the mattress with one hand high on his chest, the other pinning Dipper’s wrists over his head. 

“Daylight that can be made up tomorrow, after you’ve had a good night’s rest. I’m serious, Starhead. If I see your face out and about before 11 there  _ will  _ be consequences.” Beneath the hand over Dipper’s collarbones, Bill feels him swallow. “You’re right, it’s important that we work quickly. But it’s also important that you don’t die of exhaustion before we can even start. You and your freaky strong abilities are the key element required for this spell to work, which means taking care of yourself should be your top priority.” 

Dipper’s brow darkens in defiance as he takes this all in, glaring up into Bill’s eyes poised a few inches over his own. Finally, inevitably, his face softens into tired defeat, and his brown eyes flutter closed. 

“Fine. I’ll try to sleep. But I’m telling you, if it doesn’t work, I’ll just be sitting here doing nothing, wasting everyone’s time,” Dipper relents, shifting slightly into his dark blue comforter. He’s obviously trying his best to sound indignant, but it’s swallowed by the sleepy drawl of a man exhausted half to death. Bill smiles, satisfied, and releases his hold on Dipper’s wrists and chest. Dipper turns away from him, throwing Bill a halfhearted glare, before his eyelids flutter shut. 

Bill closes the door and saunters back down the stairs, stretching his back out to prepare himself for a day of deskwork deciphering Dipper’s envelopes. Heh. de-CIPHER-ing. 

“What’s got you in such a good mood, sunshine?” comes the gravelly voice of Stan Pines, who is standing in the entryway with his eyepatch lifted up so as not to obscure his vision any more than his cataracts do. 

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Pines,” Bill responds with a light bow in the older man’s direction. Stan is like Bill in that he appreciates obedience from those he interacts with, meaning that Bill is given a free ride from suspicion so long as he maintains a humble front before Stan. It’s worked excellently so far, after that first ‘you a demon?’ comment, Bill had received nothing but begrudging trust from the man. 

“You had a dopey smile on your face, like a teen girl who just got called pretty on prom night,” Stan grunts. 

“Did I?” Bill asks. He hadn’t been trying to look soft, and he’d never smile unless he wanted to manipulate someone into trusting him. Perhaps the deception is becoming automatic to him after living with his enemy for so long. That’s the only explanation. 

“Yeah, I could feel it from here. All sappy and gross,” Stan pulls a disgusted face. “I haven’t seen a look like that since Mabel started sneaking out to see Pacifica every night.”

“Oh,” Bill mutters weakly. He _had_ indulged himself a little bit, teasing Dipper in his room. But it hadn’t been _romantic_ by any means—or, at least, he doesn’t think so. He’s never really needed to replicate that scenario in his attempts to manipulate the humans he traps into deals. Love is a foreign, mortal concept that he definitely isn’t interested in exploring. 

Or, he  _ wasn’t _ , until that Axolotl made it his mission. Less than ten months left, and he still doesn’t have the slightest clue how to  _ love and be loved.  _ Is it even possible for a demon to do? Such emotions were invented for evolutionary purposes in mortals. How can he unlock it? Would it be appropriate to ask? No, mortals are born with love built into their bodies. Asking would just set off alarm bells. 

“Well, who’s the lucky girl?” Stan interrupts Bill’s spiral with a wag of his eyebrows. “C’mon, spit it out. Nothing hides from me in this house.”

“Oh, no one,” Bill laughs, moving to scratch the back of his head in a faux-bashful gesture. But Stan raises an eyebrow, with a look that says  _ I’m not just letting this go,  _ so Bill scrambles for a smooth excuse. “Just someone who visited the Shack a few days ago, she gave me her number but I haven’t tried calling her yet.” 

“Hop on that, kid! You and Dipper have been doing nothing but work since you’ve lived here, it’s high time the two of you chill a little, act like normal people instead of nerds.” Stan lets out a barking laugh, and Bill manages to join in a bit before shaking his head with a convincing sigh.

“I don’t know, Mr. Pines. With this whole amnesia thing… it just feels best to keep to myself for a bit longer.”

“Ah, I get it. But don’t let your baggage stand too much in your way, or you’ll be sad and lonely until you’re a cranky old man, your glory days far behind you before you even have the chance to miss them.” Stan claps Bill on the shoulder, a faraway look in his eyes. 

“I’ll… think about it,” Bill says with a smile, and okay, he can feel the difference. The smile from before had felt warm, almost fond. He hadn’t felt it creeping over his face until it fell, and he realized his cheeks were warm from its softness. This smile is very technical, practiced, plastic. Most of his smiles are. What set the other one apart? What’s the missing variable? 

“Atta boy,” Stan smacks his hand over Bill’s back once more before sidestepping him into the kitchen to grab a soda and a handful of chips. Bill, taking that as an excuse to leave, ducks into his room where the six envelopes lay brightly on his desk, ready to be puzzled over. Banishing thoughts of smiles from his mind, he plops down into his chair and gets to work, hanging up Dipper’s massive map of Gravity falls on the far window and pinpointing areas for the two of them to check out first for ingredients. 

A few hours later, Dipper stumbles into the room, his curls frizzy and sticking up in an array of different directions, his eyes soft from sleep. Bill smiles when he enters, and this time it’s not just his face that grows warm, but his chest, too. When Dipper stands on his tip-toes and perches his chin atop Bill’s shoulder to get a better look at the map, the warmth grows hotter. He feels himself go very still. 

“This looks good, Bill,” Dipper murmurs, reaching forward to trace one of the blue yarn lines Bill had tacked from the river to the lake indicating possible spots to search for  _ Isonade _ barbs. Bill only hums in response, his body still inexplicably frozen in place. Dipper withdraws his head from Bill’s shoulder and heads back over toward the desk, and the spell is broken. The warmth in Bill’s chest fades away, chased off by the sudden coolness in absence of Dipper’s warm body against his. 

Bill does not know what to do with this information, so he chooses to ignore it. 


	5. Breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for homophobic language this chapter--it's very brief but still ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> also, THANK YOU to everyone commenting and being so sweet about this story!! i'm really glad there are still people in this fandom who are here to read and appreciate my work ◡̈ i honestly was expecting like a hundred or so hits, maybe a small smattering of kudos so this is very exciting!! i love y'all!!

It’s been a week since the pair started preparing the spell, and Dipper has been on edge the whole time. Today is worse, for some reason. He finds himself flinching at the slightest of sounds, peering around suspiciously for any signs of shady creatures or floating pieces of paper with cramped red script. 

He really should have no reason to be so anxious. There hasn’t been a single sign of further action from the  _ web in the wind  _ attacker, and they’re making good progress on their spell prep. Bill says that, if they’re lucky, it’ll be ready to cast before next week’s end. 

Maybe that’s it. They’ve been pretty lucky so far—too lucky. Things never fall so perfectly into place as they have this week. Every second where nothing goes badly is another second that could be lulling Dipper into a false sense of security if he’s not constantly on the lookout. And then there’s the problem of  _ Bill.  _ As the date for when they cast the spell grows nearer and nearer, Dipper finds himself dreading what he’ll see even more. 

Because the truth is, the more he’s around Bill, the more Dipper cares about him. It’s really nothing profound, he just… likes him. His jokes, his teasing, his expressions, his hands thumbing through the pages of books, his dual-toned hair getting messed up in the wind, his little gestures when he thinks, it all makes Bill more human. And Dipper really doesn’t want that to shatter if the spell tells him something different. 

Bill Cipher wouldn’t be leading Dipper right towards a spell that would uncover his secret, Dipper keeps telling himself. If Dipper’s Bill really is Bill Cipher, he wouldn’t be helping to expose himself. But then again, what if he really, truly had his mind wiped somehow? What if he doesn’t even know that he’s the demon that tried to murder Dipper’s entire family? Is the man he’s become after all that enough to convince Dipper to… forgive him? That would be naive! If it turns out that Bill is a demon, then Dipper will just have to… 

Have to what? Kill him?! Dipper has killed plenty of vicious creatures in the past, but will he really be able to stare Bill in his big, golden eyes, and extinguish the life from them? He killed Bill before—well, he thought he did, back during the war—but now he’s a  _ human,  _ and he’s sweet and funny and charming and Dipper is absolutely terrified. 

“Hey, Starhead,” Bill nudges Dipper’s leg with his own, and Dipper looks down to see that he’s been anxiously bouncing his knee for the past who knows how many minutes. That’s another thing, the weird nickname. Bill Cipher had called Dipper Pine Tree. This Bill hasn’t used that name once, but he also doesn’t often use Dipper’s actual name. Is that enough to bind him to Cipher? Is Dipper connecting the dots in a constellation that doesn't exist?

“Dipper,” Bill huffs, louder this time. Dipper blinks.

“Right, sorry. What’s up?” Dipper glances down at their work, scouring the page for anything he might’ve missed while his mind was busy thinking itself into knots. 

“I think you need a break,” Bill says. 

“What? No, I’m fine, just got distracted for a second,” Dipper protests. Bill is probably right, he does need a break. But if he’s left alone with his thoughts, no research to occupy his attention, he knows his anxieties will really eat him up. A break would be the opposite of helpful right now. 

Warm hands find Dipper’s face, and he looks up to see Bill peering at him carefully just a few inches away. Bill runs his thumb along Dipper’s lower lip, his mouth parting involuntarily under the attention, breath caught in his throat. 

“You’re bleeding, Dipper,” Bill sighs, tapping his thumb ever so slightly against a swollen portion of Dipper’s lip, the part he usually worries between his teeth when he gets anxious. 

“Oh,” Dipper breathes, the word forming around Bill’s thumb. The older man’s expression darkens for a split second before he’s pulling away, shrugging into his jacket and tossing a hoodie at Dipper. 

“C’mon, let’s go get a latte or something. You’re going stir crazy stuck up in that brain of yours,” Bill says. Dipper is about to deny it when he realizes that actually, that’s not a bad idea. It’ll give him something to do to occupy his thoughts, but it won’t be spell-related (and thus anxiety-inducing). 

“Okay,” Dipper nods. He slides the violet hoodie over his head, but when he reaches through the arm holes he finds his hands don’t ever reach the other side, not by a long shot. He looks down at the logo—a bright green and pink scribble that reads  _ Mystery Shack  _ in flamboyant neon writing—and realizes this is  _ Bill’s  _ hoodie, not his. 

“Bill, this is yours,” Dipper reaches up to the back to pull it off, but Bill catches his wrists, holding him still. 

“I know, but it’s cozy, and the weather is starting to get a lot colder. All your sweaters are practically threadbare,” Bill snorts, and although Dipper can’t see his face he can practically  _ hear  _ him rolling his golden eyes. 

“They’re old but they’re reliable,” Dipper says in defense of his mostly Stan hand-me-down attire. He doesn’t like shopping, not like Mabel does, so he’s usually content to dig around in Stan’s closet for new things to wear if he grows out of anything. In fact, he’s pretty sure the last time he actually went clothes shopping was the beginning of his Junior year in high school. 

“Just shut up and take my hoodie. I’ve got plenty,” Bill huffs. 

“Alright, alright, fine,” Dipper says with a laugh, and Bill finally releases his hands, which are still lost in the sleeves of the violently colorful garment. It smells like coffee and that silly cinnamon cologne Bill found on one of their many midnight trips to the 24-hour gas station, the bottle designed to look like a little handle of Fireball whiskey. Dipper had said it was stupid, and maybe radioactive or something given it was on the shelves of a  _ gas station food court,  _ which is probably why Bill had bought it. 

He realizes he’s just been standing there, holding the sleeves of the hoodie close to his face, while Bill was waiting in the doorway. Shit, how long had he been zoning out for? Long enough for Bill to be giving him a weird look, his eyes staring intensely at Dipper’s face, his mouth drawn in a tight line, cheeks slightly reddened. Dipper stiffens, yanking the sleeves up over his hands so he can catch his phone, wallet, and keys when he summons them. 

“Right, lattes. What’re we thinking, Greasy’s?” Dipper asks, stepping past Bill in the doorway. That seems to snap Bill out of whatever stupor he was in, as he closes the door to Bill’s room and follows Dipper out towards the entryway. 

“Mmm, I heard that hipster place down by Edgy on Purpose just introduced some new honey lavender blend I kinda wanted to try,” Bill says. 

“Alright, that sounds good. But only if you’re at peace with spending $10 on a small cup of coffee,” Dipper snorts. 

“I think we deserve to splurge a little,” Bill says with a humorless laugh. “All this spell stuff is driving me crazy.” He rubs at his eyes, blinking blearily, and Dipper feels a pang of guilt settle deep in his stomach. He’d been so wrapped up in his own angst he hadn’t stopped to think how Bill might be feeling through all this—as far as either of them knows, they’re about to uncover the creature that erased his memories, maybe even be able to get them back. Dipper has no idea how that might feel, the kinds of emotions Bill must be cycling through as they work tirelessly on each little element of the complicated spell. 

They opt not to take the car since it’s a moderately good day and they could use the time to stretch their legs, so they walk in a comfortable silence down the dirt path into the main belly of town. Autumn has started making its retreat into winter, the leaves on many of the trees now completely shed, leaving only scraggly brown skeletons reaching high into the frigid air. They haven’t had their first snow yet, but Dipper isn’t looking forward to it. He’s always run colder than most people, and after living in the snowless bliss of California for most of his childhood, he’d never realized just how much winters affected him. The past few winters in Gravity Falls have been absolutely  _ brutal  _ on Dipper, his teeth constantly chattering between the months of December and February. Now, with November coming to an end, the skies growing greyer and darker with each passing day, Dipper resigns himself to another painful season of ice.

They make it into the heart of downtown after just about 15 minutes of walking, the time flying by after Bill makes a teasing comment about Dipper’s nose turned red from the chill, which launches into a conversation about Rudolph the reindeer and other winter traditions that Bill seems to have forgotten along with the rest of his memories. They wander further into the more alternative side of town, and Dipper is so caught up in the euphoria of observing Bill’s reaction to a fat man in red who sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake that he doesn’t notice the rancid smell until Robbie Valentino is standing right in front of him. 

“Watch where you’re stumbling, Dipshit,” Robbie growls when Dipper walks headfirst into the taller man’s chest. 

“Sorry, Robbie,” Dipper apologizes with a roll of his eyes that he doesn’t manage to stifle in time. Robbie’s thin lips pull into a snarl. 

“Nice dress,” he sneers, jabbing a nail-bitten finger into Dipper’s chest. 

“Nice eyeliner,” Dipper responds almost absentmindedly. Really, he should know better than to engage with Robbie by now, but Dipper’s first instinct when faced with minor enemies has always been sarcasm. He saves fear for the real threats, like the thing lurking in the woods that tried to rip him apart using his own magic last week. In the grand scheme of things, Robbie lies very low on Dipper’s watchlist. 

“What did you just say, Dipshit?” Robbie growls.

“Nothing, nothing,” Dipper holds his hands out, schooling his expression into that of perfect innocence, hoping to diffuse the situation before Robbie decides to make a scene like does when he’s in a bad mood. 

Of course, everything has been going too well this week for him to slip past this interaction unscathed. 

“You act so high and mighty just because you play with fairies and write shitty little stories in the paper, but I know what you really are, Dipshit,” Robbie growls. God, that nickname is getting old. “You’re just a pissy little baby, just like you were when you were a kid, always bitching and whining about something  _ scawy in the deep dawk fowest!  _ You haven’t changed a bit, pipsqueak. So quit pretending.” Robbie emphasizes his point with a little shove, and Dipper staggers back a few steps. 

“Alright, Robbie. Can I go now?” Dipper sighs. 

“What, am I not scary enough for you? Is that it? Because I can be scarier,” Robbie says with a smile that might be intimidating if he wasn’t drowning in the hood of his mangy old jacket. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his pocket knife, presumably to taunt Dipper with it in an attempt to make him scared. Dipper doesn’t know why he keeps trying that trick, it’s never worked in the past hundred times he’s pulled it. Dipper has more scars than he could reasonably count in an hour from stab wounds of different types. At this point, a two-inch pocket knife in the hands of somebody who can barely butter toast effectively is no more threatening than the thorns on a rose. 

“Hey,” Bill grabs Robbie by the wrist of the hand holding the knife with a tight grip, causing the man to drop it with a start, whirling to face Bill as if just realizing he was there the whole time. “C’mon, man. You’re my age, which means you’re old enough to know better than to pointlessly bully people who’re doing you no harm,” Bill says cooly. Robbie lets out a slightly hysterical sort of barking laugh, yanking his wrist away from Bill’s grip (after a few tries).

“Wow Dipshit, is he your boyfriend now? I always knew you were a dirty little faggot, but I didn’t think—” whatever Robbie was going to say next is cut off by Bill’s fist connecting squarely with Robbie’s jaw. 

“Bill!” Dipper cries, reaching out to grab the taller man as he lunges towards Robbie, who is staggering back with a terrified look in his beady eyes. Bill grabs him by the collar, slamming another devastating punch into Robbie’s nose with a gut-wrenching crack. “Stop it!” Dipper shouts, finally getting an arm around Bill’s body and pulling him back. Bill’s fist is still tangled in Robbie’s hoodie collar and he holds him up high, Robbie’s sneaker-clad toes dangling a few inches from the concrete. 

“If I ever hear that word come out of your filthy pathetic mouth again I swear to God,” Bill snarls, leaving the threat empty for Robbie to fill in with his imagination. 

“Bill, c’mon, he’s not worth the trouble,” Dipper protests weakly, gazing up at the ruby red blood flowing freely from Robbie’s now swollen nose. For a moment, Dipper is worried Bill is gonna hit him again, his fist tightening on Robbie’s collar. But instead he throws Robbie down with a growl. 

“That kid is a thousand times the man you’ll ever be, and you know it. Stay out of his way, or I’ll give you a lot worse than just a fractured nose,” Bill’s voice is dark and murderous enough to send chills down Dipper’s spine, and he can’t even see the man’s face. Just Robbie’s, which is twisted in teary-eyed terror. 

“I-I’m calling the cops, you fucking freak,” Robbie squeals, voice breaking. “You broke my nose!” 

At this, Dipper steps in front of Bill, offering Robbie his hand. Probably too stunned to comprehend the gesture, Robbie takes it and allows Dipper to pull him to his shaky feet. Once righted, Dipper leans in close to Robbie’s personal space, trying to make his face impassive yet threatening. 

“If you try to call the police on us, I’ll tell them about your attempted assault with a deadly weapon, and our innocent self-defense,” Dipper explains coldly, pressing the silver handle of Robbie’s pocket knife into the man’s hand, still in Dipper’s. “I know the law, Robbie, enough to circumvent any consequences sent my way, and enough to drop them all onto you tenfold.”

“But—” Robbie tries to take the knife, but Dipper slides his finger along the blunt edge of the blade, flicking it into the air with a little twirl and catching it again. He’s no stranger to weaponry, which means he’s picked up a few tricks. 

“Ah, ah, ah, every good Boy Scout should know that you never give up your knife unless the other person says…?” Dipper taunts with a light quirk of his lips. 

“Thank you,” Robbie says through gritted teeth, snatching the knife from Dipper’s open palm. Dipper leans back, smiling. 

“You’re welcome,” Dipper turns away with a coy little wave, watching from the corner of his eye as Robbie shoves the knife back into his pocket and starts making his hasty retreat. With Robbie gone he can finally look up at Bill’s face, and  _ fuck  _ that’s terrifying (and a little hot).

(Okay, a lot hot.)

His eyes practically glow with anger, his teeth bared in an enraged snarl, his sharp canines gleaming behind his smooth pink lips. His dark eyebrows are drawn into a violent V-shape over his eyes, his wavy hair tumbling messily over half his face. Bill’s broad shoulders are still pulled into a tight fighting stance, his fists clenched at his sides. One is stained with Robbie’s blood, the knuckles already starting to get swollen with bruising. 

“Hey,” Dipper says gently, reaching out and closing his hand over Bill’s bloodied one. Instantly, his posture relaxes, though his face maintains its murderous expression.

“How long has that been going on?” Bill asks, though it sounds more like an order. Dipper sighs tiredly.

“Pretty much since Tambry broke up with him. He was a good kid in high school, we were even friends for a little while,” Dipper says, and he can’t hide the bitterness in his voice. Their group had been pretty much unstoppable after the war ended and they’d banded together to defeat a common evil. Dipper had told his friends—and by extension, Robbie—so many secrets, shared so many good memories. Now, going back to petty fights like when they were children, it just feels like a hollow hurt. 

“Miserable asshole,” Bill growls. Dipper laughs.

“Yeah, poor guy is stuck in the past, I don’t think he can accept that everyone else has moved on with their lives,” Dipper says sadly. Beside him, Bill laughs hollowly. 

“Only you could feel sorry for a guy who just pulled a knife on you,” he mutters. 

“Well, I mean, he was right about one thing,” Dipper says with his heart in his throat. It’s true, one of his taunts had actually struck home for once, and it hurt more than Dipper anticipated. 

“What’s that?” Bill asks, and Dipper can feel his burning yellow gaze searing into him as he kicks at a rock on the sidewalk. 

“Me being queer. I mean—he used a gross word for it, but I’m bisexual,” Dipper confesses in a muttered rush. His blood roars in his ears as he fidgets with the oversized sleeves of his sweater, not daring to look up at Bill and gauge his reaction. 

“Hell yeah, me too, Starhead!” Bill says suddenly in a cheerful voice. Dipper’s head snaps up so fast he swears he hears his neck crack. Bill’s murderous expression has morphed into a wide, cheesy grin, and he holds his clean hand up, fingers splayed out. “Bi-five!”

Dipper looks at him, eyes wide, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. He doesn’t know what he was expecting when he came out to Bill, but this definitely isn’t it. 

Well, he’d maybe been  _ hoping _ …

“Don’t leave me hanging,” Bill prods, nudging Dipper’s foot with his own. 

And suddenly, the sheer ridiculousness of the day causes Dipper’s stunned face to melt into a sudden fit of giggles. He high-fives (Bi-fives) Bill between gasps, tears springing to his eyes as another onslaught of laughter takes over his every breath. 

Once he finally gains control over his emotions again, it’s definitely been too long to be considered normal. As he wipes tears from the corners of his eyes, he notices Bill’s wearing that same strangled expression from earlier, with the lightly flushed cheeks and intense gaze. 

“Man, that’s enough distractions. Let’s go get your expensive hipster coffee,” Dipper takes Bill’s bruised hand and pulls him back in the direction of the coffee shop, inspecting the man’s bronze knuckles for fractures or other problems worse than bruising. It’ll probably hurt like a bitch to write with for a few days, which means that Dipper is gonna have to put up with more of Bill’s whining about his handwriting. 

Once satisfied that Bill’s hand seems to be okay, he drops it, immediately missing the warmth. Where Dipper is always cold, Bill is always hot. He’d noticed it that night when he fell asleep in Bill’s bed after casting  _ web in the wind,  _ and it’s been hard to forget it since. Every little brush of Bill’s tan skin is like searing flame against Dipper’s, and he can’t figure out if it’s pleasant or painful. Perhaps a little bit of both? Who says they need to be mutually exclusive? 

They walk the rest of the way to the shop in companionable silence, and Dipper is pleased to see when he opens the door that the shop is almost empty, save for a pair of students bent over a thick textbook at a table in the corner. Dipper winces sympathetically, remembering not for the first time that midterms are coming up soon and he really should be more worried about them than he is right now. 

They each order large honey lavender lattes, with Dipper requesting an extra two shots of espresso and Bill asking for his to be iced with an added pump of the sugary flavoring. Their total comes out to a jaw-dropping $22.50, and Bill passes the barista the required amount before Dipper has the chance to stop him. When Dipper tries to pay him back, Bill dismisses him with a wave.

“Consider it a thank-you for telling me what you did just now,” Bill explains. “For trusting me.”

“Oh,” Dipper blushes. “It’s—not a big deal, but—yeah. You’re—you’re welcome, I guess.”

Bill takes their drinks from the barista with a charming smile, handing Dipper the hot one in a beige paper cup and keeping his iced drink close to his body. 

“Does your family know?” Bill asks, plopping into a chair across from Dipper at one of the many dark wood tables. Theirs is right by the window, allowing them to gaze out at the cold world outside from the cozy lamplit cafe. Bill takes a long sip from his iced latte, and Dipper shivers by proxy, huddling closer around his hot drink. 

“No,” he responds after taking a ginger sip, an involuntary moan of satisfaction escaping his lips. “It’s not like I don’t want them to know, I’m sure they’d be fine with it, I just… I don’t know. I haven’t gotten around to it.” In truth, Dipper thinks its stupid—why does he need to  _ come out  _ to them, why can’t he just… start dating people and tell everyone they just need to accept it? Mabel had made her coming out a whole affair, with pink and orange ribbons for all the shades of the lesbian flag, and a massive cake with two brides from two different wedding toppers glued haphazardly to the top, and Dipper had instantly decided that he didn’t want that for himself. 

So he just kinda… floated through discovering his sexuality without really talking about it with anyone other than the handful of boys and girls he dated for brief periods of time in California. He’d never dated anyone long enough to bring them home to meet the folks, so nobody really knew that he’d explored both ends of the spectrum. It wasn’t on purpose, that’s just how it had happened.

“Not even Mabel?” Bill asks. Dipper shakes his head around another sip of his own personal brand of heroin—caffeine. Bill stretches a long leg out to wrap around one of Dipper’s, raising his eyebrows. “I think you should tell her. Today.”

“What? Why?” Dipper frowns. Bill puts his hands out and shrugs, drawing another deep sip from his straw. 

“You’ve seemed extra stressed out lately, not just from the spell, but in general. I think any excuse to talk to your sister would be good for you. You have a bond that transcends time and space,” Bill explains with a little flourish of his hand. Dipper looks at the man across the table from him curiously. He’s right, Mabel  _ would  _ make him feel better, and what better way to start a conversation than some dramatic sexuality confessions? Just the thought of talking to his sister again lights something warm and happy in his stomach, and Dipper realizes with a start that he hasn’t done much more than send her the occasional text since their birthday almost three months ago. He glances up at Bill from beneath his lashes in awe at how well the man seems to know him after just a few months of living together. 

“You’re right,” Dipper hums into his cup. “I’ll call her when we get back to the shack.”

“Cheers,” Bill smiles and holds up his drink, and Dipper rolls his eyes but lifts his own cup up too, clicking the rims of the lids together before bringing his back to his lips to take a long sip. Bill does the same, and they meet eyes. Then Bill laughs, and so does Dipper, and for a little while they live in a world free of curses and assassins and homophobic assholes. It’s a world where it’s just them, and Dipper doesn’t worry what they’ll do if Bill turns out to be a demon or a shapeshifter or anything else, he just enjoys this little bubble of peace, their legs intertwined, worries forgotten. 

“Dipper! Dippin-dot! Brosephina! Brozinski! Dipper!” Mabel picks up after the second ring, already screaming into the receiver before the call connects. 

“Hi Mabes,” Dipper breathes, feeling like a heavy weight has just been lifted from his shoulders just at the sound of his sister’s voice. “How’s Europe?”

“Oh, it’s so great Dipper! I’m so glad you called, Pazzy has been holed up in our room  _ all day  _ working on some speech about foreign affairs, she won’t even let me in for a kiss break!” Mabel laments, and Dipper stifles a laugh. Pacifica has big dreams of being the first female President of the United States, which means that she’s taking classes that probably go straight over Mabel’s glitter-clad head most of the time. Dipper has no doubt that Pacifica’s homework assignments must bore Mabel to death. 

“Sounds interesting, do you know what the assignment was?” Dipper asks.

“ _ No,  _ and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did, you big nerd. I wanna talk about cool stuff like monsters and goblins and all the things I’m missing from Gravity Falls,” Mabel groans. 

“Sorry to disappoint, but the biggest monster so far has just been Robbie,” Dipper laughs to hide the lie. Mabel can’t keep a secret to save her life, which means that if she finds out about the spell he and Bill are working on, news will make its way to Stan, who will forbid any more magic using, and things will just get messy. With Mabel, it’s easiest to keep things light. 

“Ugh, is that stupid-head giving you trouble? Put me on speaker, I’ll punch him with my words,” Mabel lets out a battle cry loud enough that Dipper needs to pull his phone far away from his ear to keep from going deaf. 

“Sorry Mabes, but Bill already took care of that,” Dipper giggles a bit nervously at the memory. Sure, it had been scary, but also a little hilarious. 

“ _ No. Way.  _ Tell me everything! Was there blood? Did Robbie turn into a vampire and try to bite him? Spill!” Mabel squeals. So Dipper takes a breath and tells her the thrilling tale, from Dipper running into Robbie and accidentally pissing him off with an eye roll, all the way up to when Robbie pulled out his knife and Bill stopped him. 

“Oh my god! Dipper! That’s so cute, he was defending your honor like—like a knight! A chivalrous knight,” Mabel gushes. “Bill just gets better and better the more I hear about him, did you see that picture of him fishing that little girl’s balloon out of a tree on one of the tours? Grunkle Stan sent it in the group chat.”

He had seen the picture, along with the actual event as it happened. Bill had leapt onto the first branch of the redwood like a cat, climbing all the way up to nearly the top before tying one of their sparkly gold gnome keychains to the end of the string and sending it floating gently down into the little girl’s arms. They’d gotten almost $200 in tips that day, which is what gave Bill the justification he needed to buy that dumb cologne later in the week. 

“Yeah, well Robbie must’ve thought I was Bill’s damsel in distress, because after that he called me a fag and tried to threaten me with that stupid toy knife again,” Dipper says with a dark laugh. On the other end of the line, he hears Mabel go silent. 

Then, after a few seconds, “I’m gonna kill him. Please say you killed him, and he is now dead, and I can attend his funeral just to dump moldy Smile Dip in his grave. Please Dipper.”

Dipper bites his lip around a smile. “Bill punched him in the face. Twice.” 

Mabel lets out a high-pitched shriek of glee. 

“Broke his nose, I’m pretty sure. He probably would’ve done worse if I hadn’t physically held him back,” Dipper says proudly, and he knows he shouldn’t be celebrating someone else’s pain, but  _ god  _ Robbie has had it coming for a while. 

“Oh my god, that’s the best thing I’ve heard all year. Did Robbie cry? I bet he hasn’t been given a good ass-whooping since you sicced Rumble on him,” Mabel snickers. “Now you’ve had not one but  _ two  _ hunky blond men defend your honor against Robbie, how hilarious is that?”

“It’s pretty funny,” Dipper laughs. He hadn’t thought about it that way, poor Robbie hasn’t caught a break since he started antagonizing Dipper. Maybe this will be enough to keep him away for a while. “After that, I gave him his knife back and told him that if he squealed I’d just tell the police that he threatened us with a weapon and we acted in self defense. Then he ran away.”

“Man, I wish I’d been there, Dip. That’s like some next-level action movie shit,” Mabel sighs. “I can’t believe he called you that. I bet he said it a lot nastier than in your retelling, he’s such a greasy old sock.”

“Yeah,” Dipper says quietly. “I—uh, that’s… actually why I called you, Mabel. I’m sure you already know but I realized that I’ve never officially, like, ‘told’ you, so… I’m bisexual.” Dipper winces at the clumsy delivery, he’d had a whole speech planned out, but everything went right out the window when he got distracted talking about Bill. He braces himself for the impact of his sister’s response, hoping for nonchalance but knowing that it’ll likely be the opposite.

“ _ WHAT?! _ ” comes Mabel’s instant, hysterical reply. “Dipper, I  _ so _ did  _ not  _ know! How come you never said anything?!” She screams in a rush, the words melting together. 

“I thought you said your gaydar was stronger than steel!” Dipper responds with equal alarm. He’d just assumed that Mabel already figured it out a long time ago, which would’ve made this call easier. But of course, nothing is ever easy for Dipper Pines. 

“It  _ is!  _ But you were always so obsessed with Wendy, and then in high school you just got all hard for  _ school _ , I thought you were still getting over her!” Mabel whines. 

“What? No, I was over Wendy long before school even started up freshman year. And I do not get  _ hard  _ for school, Mabel, gross,” Dipper scrunches his nose, trying not to imagine what his sister must’ve thought of him all that time. “Don’t you remember JP from my Lit class?”

“ _ YOU FUCKED JP FROM LIT CLASS?! _ ” Mabel howls with the force and volume of a thousand banshees. 

“I thought I made it obvious!” Dipper slumps into his pillow, glad that nobody else is around to see the dark strawberry shade of his face. JP was Dipper’s first sorta-boyfriend, when he was sixteen. He was smart, but he was also tall, and strong, and on the rugby team. Dipper had gone a little weak for him, and on homecoming night they hooked up in the bathroom at a house party. They spent a few fun weeks together before deciding that they were better off just as friends, with Dipper so busy with his advanced classes and JP spending every day out on the practice field. They still send each other memes every once in a while, but Dipper hasn’t seen him in person since graduation. 

“I mean, you were always talking about how good of a writer he was, but I just kinda tuned that stuff out,” Mabel huffs.

“I guess that means you also tuned out all the parts when I compared him to a greek god and said I wanted to lick his abs,” Dipper snickers at Mabel’s mortified gasp. “I always wondered why that never got much of a reaction from you.”

“I’m so angry at myself, my bookish little brother was thirsting after the star rugby player right in front of my eyes and I never noticed,” Mabel groans miserably. “How long have you known?”

“Hmm, for a while, I guess. Remember my obsession with Chris Pine when we were ten? It wasn’t just because we had almost the same last name,” Dipper admits. 

“Okay, but that’s valid. As a lesbian female, even I can admit that Chris Pine is one of the most heartbreakingly gorgeous people in history,” Mabel muses. “Second only to my lovely Pacifica, of course.”

“Of course,” Dipper nods with an exasperated smile. They slip into a comfortable silence after that, Dipper watches as a bead of condensation tumbles down the side of his soda can on the desk. 

“Thanks for  _ finally  _ telling me, Dipper.” Mabel says quietly. “I love you.” Dipper smiles into his pillow.

“You’re welcome. I love you too.”

“So… Does Bill have anything to do with this sudden confession?” Mabel asks innocently, but Dipper can hear the coy smile forming around her words. “Perhaps there was something about him beating up your enemy to protect you that sent your gay little heart aflutter?”

“ _ Mabel _ !” Dipper makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, face blooming in red again. “No, he—shut up— _ no _ !”

“Oh my god, I  _ knew  _ it! Don’t worry, I approve of this union wholeheartedly. And I think he likes you too, so you should totally go for it,” Mabel gushes.

“ _ No _ Mabel, I—wait, really?” Dipper had been about to change the subject when suddenly his heart went still. 

“Yeah, he talks about you really fondly whenever he texts, you’re a pretty loveable guy.” 

“I’m sure, all three times he’s texted you,” Dipper snorts dismissively, but his heart is still running a mile a minute. What had Bill said? It’s not like it really matters, Dipper doesn’t like him that way—obviously—but Bill is… objectively… somewhat attractive. It’s only natural that he’d be curious if Mabel says that an attractive person liked him. 

“Noo, Dipper! I’m serious!” Mabel whines. “He makes ‘Starhead’ sound like a term of endearment. It’s really cute.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that,” Dipper rolls his eyes, glancing at the mirror in the corner of the room. He isn’t wearing his hat right now, so he can faintly see the bottom half of his constellation birthmark. He doesn’t hate it as much as he used to when he was a kid, in fact he’s almost grown to take pride in it—and he’d be lying if he said that Bill’s dumb nickname doesn’t have anything to do with the change of heart. 

“Do you know if he’s gay at all? I got vibes but he was still pretty doped out on his amnesia the last time I saw him in person,” Mabel asks, and Dipper wonders if it would be a good idea to tell her. Would Bill be okay with it? He didn’t seem too worried about it when he came out to Dipper, so it can’t have been  _ that  _ big of a secret, but still.

Unfortunately, before he’s finished mulling it over, Mabel giggles into the receiver as if she’s just unlocked some sort of deep, dark secret.

“Oh my god he  _ is,  _ isn’t he! And you’re fucking stoked about it!” Mabel whoops.

“Mabel, please, he’s just a friend,” Dipper sighs, though he doubts his sister can hear him through all her celebratory giggles. Just a friend, and a magic tutor, and a bodyguard, and a possible demon. Dipper fights the urge to let out a longsuffering groan. 

“But you’d be so cute together! Nerdy twink ghost hunter and his buff amnesiac boyfriend—it’s like,  _ straight  _ out of a gay indie film.”

“Okay, first of all, I’m not a  _ twink,  _ Mabel, ouch. Second of all, nothing can be ‘straight’ out of a gay indie film. Third of all, you’re turning everything into a dramatic love affair because you’ve been reading too much Stephanie Meyer. Honestly, if you need some good book recommendations you should just ask me, I’d be happy to help.”

“Dipper, I’m never taking a book rec from you again, not after you suggested I read the  _ original  _ Frankenstein,” Mabel accuses with a bored drawl. 

“It’s honestly a very good read. I thought you liked empowered feminist authors,” Dipper sighs. “If you’re in the mood for something more romantic, Jane Austen is the OG.”

“You are  _ such  _ a dweeb, Dipper. It amazes me sometimes.” To Mabel’s credit, she truly does sound astonished. But Dipper sees through her feigned tone, this isn’t the first time they’ve discussed their vast differences, literary or otherwise. 

“How are we related?” Dipper laughs. 

“How are we  _ twins _ ?!” Mabel emphasizes. “What else has been going on over there? Are midterms kicking your ass too?”

They fall into an easy conversation after that, going back and forth with teasing and chatting until Dipper stifles his fourth yawn and Mabel scolds him for not calling her when they’d both have a few hours of daylight to talk without one of their time zones messing it up. They say goodbye, and Dipper rolls over in his bed, not bothering to flick off the lamp light before his heavy eyelids are drooping shut. 

That night, he has a nightmare that he forgets the second he wakes up in a cold sweat. His heart races like a hammer against his chest, and every time he blinks he swears he sees a brief glitchy flash of white light. He tries to remember what had happened in the dream, but nothing comes to mind, so he swallows the dread creeping up his throat and rolls over once more. 

It’s a while before he’s finally able to submit himself to sleep. 

“Rise and shine sleeping beauty!” Bill singsongs from Dipper’s doorway. “Today’s the big day!” Dipper groans and rolls over, throwing his pillow over his head to block out Bill’s loud stomping throughout his room.

“Do you have a snooze button?” Dipper grumbles. 

“Nope,” Bill replies, popping the ‘P.’ The bed dips as Bill sits down on it, poking Dipper’s arm. “C’mon Starhead, just one more potion, then we can do the spell. Let’s go get ourselves some Qalupalik hair then find this bitch.”

Dipper heaves a deep sigh, flopping the pillow off his face and onto the floor. He rubs his sleepy eyes and sits up, stretching his arms high over his head. He’d been kept up all night by strange nightmares that he can never remember by the time he wakes up, in the past few days they’d just been getting worse. He’s considered telling Bill about them, but what would be the use? Apart from the weird white flashes, they’re just ordinary nightmares, and there’s not much anyone can do to stop nightmares. 

“Dipper. Get up, before I start tickling you.” Bill says with a roll of his eyes. 

Dipper leaps out of bed at that, holding his arms over his stomach warily. Bill had discovered this unfortunate weakness of Dipper’s once on accident, when he went to flick a mosquito from Dipper’s side and Dipper flinched back with a giggle. Now Bill uses it as an effective threat whenever possible. 

“Where’s my jacket?” Dipper asks, fumbling around in his closet. Something thick and heavy hits the back of his head, and he turns around just in time to catch the brown leather bomber jacket Bill had thrown his way before it tumbles to the floor. 

“You’ll want something underneath that, though. It’s snowing,” Bill points out. Dipper’s heart sinks, and gazing out the triangular attic window, sure enough, he sees a thin blanket of white covering the ground and tree branches outside. 

“Goddamnit,” Dipper curses. He pulls his sleep shirt over his head and reaches for a long-sleeved sweater for some university Grunkle Stan had briefly attended while he drove across the country in his young adulthood. Actually, would it be better to put on something tighter and more form-fitting first? That way snow couldn’t fall down his bare back if it got into his sweater. But would it restrict his movement too much?

He’s still debating when warm hands brush against his back between his shoulder blades. He stiffens and turns around to see Bill looking intensely at his skin with a weird look in his eyes. Inexplicably, goosebumps erupt over Dipper’s arms.

“What’s this marking?” Bill asks. His voice is a low rumble by Dipper’s ear. 

“Uh, which one?” Dipper asks, and for some reason his voice is tight. Bill runs four long fingers from the top of Dipper’s right shoulder blade down to nearly the bottom of his ribcage on the left side of his back. Dipper shivers.

“These ones,” Bill murmurs.

“Oh,” Dipper clears his throat to chase off the odd waver in his voice. “They’re claw marks. Blue tiger, it was terrorizing a peryton herd so I guided it back to the spirit caves. It was daytime, so I thought the rest of the pack would be asleep, but one of them got me as I was going to leave.” He still remembers the sickening feeling of his flesh tearing under those razor-sharp claws, how could he forget? He’d barely had time to throw up a handful of blinding powder before the massive blue beast lunged to attack again. Blue tigers are relatively harmless creatures, feasting on spiritual energy from already deceased animals, but they can get fiercely protective of their packs and hate intruders. They can grow to be over ten feet long, but fortunately he’d only run into one that was still a baby. Any bigger, and the swipe of its claws might’ve split Dipper in half. 

“You should never turn your back on a tiger, Starhead,” Bill scolds, but his voice is eerily quiet, holding none of its usual cheekiness.

“I know that now, don’t I?” Dipper snorts. “Each of my scars are lessons I’ve had to learn the hard way. That one’s no different.”

“What about these?” Bill reaches across Dipper’s body to grab onto his left arm, thumb brushing over the dotted scars that cover the space between his wrist and elbow. Dipper lets out a dark laugh and pulls away, reaching for a tighter long sleeved shirt. 

“I made the mistake of trusting a demon once,” he mutters. “It’ll never happen again.” Those scars were from when Bill Cipher had possessed his body, experimenting with pain, and though they were small cuts from forks, their memory is painful. They stand out as a symbol of his naive stupidity back then, and he hopes to heaven that history won’t prove itself repetitive once they cast the revealing spell. If it turns out that Cipher tricked Dipper into trusting him  _ again,  _ Dipper might just have a breakdown. 

“I know how you feel,” Bill says with a hint of bitterness in his voice, withdrawing from Dipper’s side. Dipper grimaces, remembering that there’s still a possibility that Bill hasn’t been lying about his identity. He can still offer Bill the benefit of the doubt, and if Bill really is human after all this, Dipper will make sure to apologize for his suspicions. 

But for now, all he can do is walk forward and hope to god that he’s not stumbling towards his demise. 

Bill flops back onto Dipper’s bed while Dipper finishes assembling the warmest possible winter outfit even though he knows that he’ll be shivering after ten minutes out there regardless. As Dipper fastens the buttons on his third coat, Bill peers at him curiously. 

“Why do you need so many layers?” he asks, rolling onto his back to look at Dipper upside down. “Are you  _ that  _ scared of the cold?”

“I’m not scared,” Dipper huffs, sticking his gloves between his teeth while he moves to tie up the laces on his thick combat boots. “I just get cold really easily. It impedes my work.”

“Aww, don’t worry Starhead, I’ll keep you warm,” Bill coos. Dipper shoots him a half hearted glare before standing up to tug his hat over his messy sleep-crumpled curls.

“Teach me some warming charms, that’ll do the trick,” Dipper says as Bill tosses his backpack at him. 

“I’ve already told you, it’s hard to do warming spells on people, you might accidentally boil your blood,” Bill scolds. He stands up from Dipper’s bed, stretching his arms up and yawning like a cat, and Dipper pointedly does  _ not  _ look at that little sliver of warm bronze skin that always flashes from beneath his shirt’s hem when he stretches like that. Same way he doesn’t look at it every single time it happens. Nope, no dumb gay fantasies here, not with Dipper Pines. If he just happens to be looking in that direction every once in a while, it’s purely coincidence, and he’s not gonna look  _ away  _ if he just coincidentally happens to be staring, because that would be admitting that he was looking where he shouldn’t be.

“Dipper?” Bill’s voice cuts through his thoughts like a hot knife through butter, and Dipper blinks away the image that he was—once again—definitely not memorizing with his retinas. 

“Right, sorry, still a little sleepy,” Dipper fumbles, rubbing at his eyes until he sees spots. Then he turns to gaze reluctantly out at the pristine snowy landscape beyond his window. “At least it’ll be easier to find the Qalupalik with a bit of ice over the lake,” he muses, forcing himself to look on the bright side. They’re  _ so close  _ to figuring this out, he can’t let a little bit of snow get him down. Not now. 

Bill leads the way down the stairs, ducking into his room to grab his own backpack and hoodie, the violet one Dipper had worn earlier. Dipper reaches into the coat closet and grabs a pair of gloves from the box on the top shelf, tossing them to the taller man knowing that if his fingers get numb he’ll be complaining about them hurting his spellwork all day. 

Dipper doesn’t smell anything cooking or hear the TV playing some meaningless reality drama, so he assumes everyone is still asleep. The house is silent.

That’s another thing Dipper hates about snow—the silence. Usually, the woods are full of life, with rustling and mysterious sounds floating through the air in all directions. But when everything is coated in the thick carpet of white, everything goes completely still, as if dead. What little he can hear—like his heartbeat or the sounds of his own blinking—are amplified to the thousandth degree. It completely puts Dipper on edge. 

“D’you think we’ll be out long?” Bill calls from the kitchen, and Dipper jumps more violently than he probably should. Fucking snow. 

“Uh, I don’t know, why?” Dipper responds, walking through the living room over to where Bill is rummaging through the cupboards. He’s tall enough that Dipper can’t see his face, so he can’t guess as to what he might be looking for. 

“I’m wondering if we’ll need to bring any extra food to satisfy your frail little body’s needs,” Bill snickers, and Dipper can’t keep the stupid smile from creeping over his lips.

“I’m not frail, I’ve just got a runner’s build. All that unnecessary bulk of yours would just get in the way during a race,” Dipper retorts, leaning over the counter on the other side. Bill ducks his head down under the space between the cabinets and the bar counter, one thick black brow arched suggestively. 

“You trying to get a piece?” Bill asks, and it would be a sarcastic enough question if he hadn’t said it with such a velvety rumble. Fortunately, Dipper’s cheeks don’t betray him as he feels them held steadfastly at the same temperature. 

“I literally never said that, you’re just reading into my words because you’re desperate for my attention,” Dipper smirks. 

“Oh I’m desperate, but not for attention,” Bill sighs, then looks at Dipper with over-exaggeratedly hooded eyes. He licks his lips, and Dipper knows it’s for a bit, he  _ knows,  _ but it still manages to ignite something hot and pooling in his stomach. 

“Shut up, you stupid horndog,” Dipper laughs, reaching across the counter to punch at Bill’s shoulder. If he observes the impressive firmness of the taller man’s bicep in the process of this, it’s only because they’d been talking about Bill’s body mass (emphasis on  _ mass _ ) already. 

Bill giggles ( _ giggles! _ ) and tosses a few protein bars into his backpack. “I’ll bring a few of these just in case.” 

Dipper checks his backpack for the third time, making sure he’s got all the necessary research, weapons, and supplies for their expedition, then sulks over to the door. Instantly, he’s met with a bite of cold air against his face—the only exposed skin on his body. Behind him, Bill saunters out in just a hoodie, a red scarf, and some snow pants, looking bright as day. Dipper sighs and follows him out down the path towards the lake, feeling no remorse about how he’s disrupting the perfection of freshly fallen snow. 

As they walk, the snow that had been falling at a lazy pace since they left that morning comes to a gentle stop, leaving the forest landscape completely devoid of sound or movement. Dipper hears his heart thump in his chest, then shakes his head in hopes of ignoring it. 

“There, I see the lake,” Bill says, pointing ahead. Sure enough, about a minute later, they break past the treeline and onto the lake’s snowy beach. The lake stretches out in a sea of smooth black, contrasting sharply with the white clouded sky. Parts of the lake have already frozen over after just one snow, which would be unusual in any other part of the world, but since they’re in Gravity Falls, the creatures of the winter often like to accelerate the process of the seasons changing into their preferred climate. Usually, the day of the first snow marks the beginning of a long, constant winter, until the frost fairies and Nuckelavee and Yuki-onna begin losing their power as the spring solstice inevitably draws nearer. 

Dipper trudges to the edge of the lake and examines the water as far out as he can see. There doesn't seem to be any cracks, and though it had snowed the lake has frozen over glassy and clear, likely frozen still due to the Nykur’s enthusiasm to start trapping humans beneath the surface. Dipper has been able to keep the creatures from doing too much harm in the past two years he’s lived here year-round, but it’s not easy work. Protecting the citizens of Gravity Falls really is a full time job. 

“I think it’s safe to walk on, but we should be careful, since it’s the first day of winter, the creatures are gonna be restless,” Dipper calls back to Bill, who had been fishing for the bottle of preservative herbs that they’re planning to keep the Qalupalik’s hairs in. 

“That just means we’ll get to find a fresh specimen,” Bill rings, trotting over to Dipper’s side and handing him a silver set of scissors. “This snow has saved us an afternoon of digging through lake gunk to find leftover hairballs.”

Dipper wrinkles his nose. “Gross, is that really what you were gonna make us do?” They hadn’t discussed specifics, Bill had only said that they’d be able to find what they needed at the lake. 

“Yep,” Bill nods solemnly. “Now, you’re gonna hate me for this, but you should probably take off a few of those layers if we’re gonna be taunting live Qalupalik.”

“What? Why?” Dipper spins around to face him, and to Bill’s credit he truly does look apologetic about it. 

“You said so yourself, Starhead. They’re gonna be feisty. I’m not saying we’ll  _ definitely  _ get pulled under a few times, but there’s a good chance of it, and it’ll be harder to cast with 40 soaking wet sweaters on.” Bill reaches behind his head and strips himself free of the hoodie, leaving his torso covered in only a navy blue tee shirt promoting some album about Illinois that belonged to Stan. “Besides, if we get wet, you won’t want to hike back home without any dry clothes.”

“You think we’ll get pulled under?” Dipper asks weakly, gazing with horror at the icy lake before him. He imagines his whole body enveloped in frozen water, and a bolt of fear crackles down his spine. For a second, his vision is overtaken by white, but he blinks it away. Maybe that’s what his nightmares have been about?

“I mean, I’m not  _ counting  _ on it, but it’s good to be prepared, right? And you’ve got the magic to protect yourself if that happens,” Bill sighs, but Dipper doesn’t turn away from the water, so Bill reaches forward and pulls him back by the shoulder, spinning the boy to face him. “Look, you’re an incredible mage. I’ve told you a million times, so you know I’m not just saying that to make you feel better. We’ve just gotta lure out one of those green-faced monsters long enough to cut their hair, then we’ll be done with everything, we’ll be able to finally cast the spell. Okay?”

Dipper nods numbly. “Okay, okay, it’s—it’s fine,” he says, biting his lip. “I just… I feel like something bad is about to happen.”

“Could be a Mara manipulating your emotions, did you see any snakes on the way here?” Bill looks around, but of course the landscape is still. Dipper shakes his head. 

“No, it’s probably just me being a bitch about the cold,” Dipper mutters, reaching up to unzip his bomber jacket and unravel his scarf. 

“When we get home after all this, I’ll ask Mabel for her hot chocolate recipe, then we can spend the rest of the day sitting in front of the fire and warming your shivery little self up,” Bill promises, booping Dipper on his undoubtedly bright red nose. And Bill, curse him, isn’t wearing any gloves but his finger is still shockingly warm. 

“No, when this is done, we’re going to cast the spell, right?” Dipper says after tossing his jacket, snow pants, hat, and—reluctantly—Stan’s cozy college sweater into his backpack, leaving him in only a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of sweatpants. 

“You wanna do it today? I have no objections, but you don’t seem to be in peak condition right now,” Bill gestures at Dipper’s face, where his teeth have already started to chatter. 

“It’s not gonna get any warmer,” Dipper sighs dejectedly, then clamps his jaw shut, shaking his head. “No, I’m fine. I don’t know why the cold bothers me so much, I’ll get over it.” 

Bill shrugs and brandishes a golden pair sewing shears, snipping them open and shut once with a grin. “Alright then, snow princess. Let’s go do some hairstyling.”

Bill steps out onto the ice first, and the click of his boot’s heel against the glossy surface sends a hollow singing noise skidding through the water underneath. As his second foot connects with the ice, Dipper faintly hears a slight crack accompanying the otherworldly ice song. Dread sits like a heavy stone in his stomach, but when Bill turns around and offers his hand, Dipper takes it, following him onto the precariously beautiful sheet of glass. 

Almost instantly, Dipper slips, heart rate spiking. 

He’s kept from faceplanting onto the cold ice, however, by a warm pair of arms circling around his waist and pulling him upright against Bill’s chest

“Thanks,” Dipper breathes, heart hammering against his ribs so hard he swears Bill must feel it, pressed as he is against the man’s body. He moves to step away, but Bill keeps him glued against him with a vice-like grip. 

“Point your toes out, and bend forward a little,” Bill instructs, putting a hand against the small of Dipper’s back as a guide. “When you take a step, keep your feet flat on the ice. It’ll spread out your center of gravity and help you keep from falling.” His breath is warm against Dipper’s ear. 

“Okay,” Dipper says, and Bill steps away. Instantly Dipper misses the warmth of his proximity, but sucks it up and takes a tentative flat-footed step forward. 

Safe.

“Alright, how do we lure out a Qalupalik?” Dipper asks. 

“We don’t,” Bill says with a smirk. He bends over his backpack on the shore, withdrawing from it a raggedy ann doll that looks to be a thousand years old. Her red yarn hair is coming undone from its braids, her blue and white checkered dress torn and covered in mysterious stains. The side of her stitched mouth is split open, spilling yellowish white stuffing from inside her body. “She does,” Bill says proudly, shaking the doll. It lets out a mechanical sort of cry, and Dipper recoils a bit, wrinkling his nose.

“What the hell is that thing?”

“I don’t really know, I found it in Stan’s supply closet. I think he used to tell people it was haunted or something,” Bill shrugs then walks towards Dipper, holding the doll out with her back facing out. Dipper sees a little white ring attached to a string that leads inside the doll, presumably the source of the strange crying sound from before. Bill threads a long finger through the loop and pulls until it stretches to its limit, then releases it. The doll makes a horrifying whine, and Dipper thinks it must’ve once sounded like a baby’s cry before old age corrupted it into the robotic screech it is now. 

“That’s terrifying,” Dipper says with a revolted shiver. 

“It’s our ticket to fresh Qalupalik, trust me, they eat this stuff up,” Bill grins. “Literally.”

“I know what Qalupalik eat, Bill. I did the same research as you,” Dipper rubs his eyes tiredly. How did it come to this? “But that doll doesn’t sound anything like a baby, not anymore.”

“It’s close enough,” Bill protests. He draws the string back again, making Dipper cringe again. “Here, point to the doll and say  _ sonum sustinere _ .”

“ _ Sonum sustinere _ ,” Dipper mutters, feeling the magic coil through the words as they roll off his tongue. Then Bill releases the string, and the doll starts to cry even louder than before, as if the sound has been overlapped a thousand times over. What’s worse, she doesn’t stop screaming even after the length of the string finishes withdrawing back into her body. 

“Perfect,” Bill chirps. Then he stretches his arm back and throws the doll far out onto the ice, her crying receding slightly as she arcs through the air. She drops to the ice with a light thud, a quiet ping from the water signaling her landing. “Now we wait,” Bill says with a pleased smile. 

It isn’t long before a low, eerie humming starts up from somewhere beneath the ice. Dipper tenses as the sound grows clearer and clearer, holding his casting hand out with one hand, shears in the other. 

When spidery tapping noises mingle with the humming, he watches the silhouette of the crying doll with bated breath. Any second now… 

A noise like metal crumpling erupts from where the doll screams as suddenly sheets of the now cracked open ice shoot into the air. A scaly webbed hand, followed by an arm, shoulder, and then head of sickening green skin, sloughing off from the waterlogged flesh of the Qalupalik’s face emerges from the surface. It reaches for the doll in the same instant that Dipper sticks the palm of his casting hand out, magical energy causing his whole arm to tingle.

“ _ Sile! _ ” Dipper shouts, maybe with a little too much force, as he feels the air around him ripple with the impact of his spell. The Qalupalik opens its frowning fishlike mouth in a screech that gets interrupted the moment the spell connects with its body, commanding it completely still. The humming, along with the tapping and the doll’s crying goes silent. He darts forward as fast as he can with the strange foot posture Bill had taught him, scissors at the ready, Bill by his side. 

As they get closer to the hole the monster had opened up, Dipper cringes at the way the ice has fissured open, sending long white cracks like spider webs out from the center. He also notices now that the Qalupalik is a good deal larger than he’d expected, from its chin to the top of its head is almost two feet, its hands spread out against the ice as long as Dipper’s wrist to shoulder. It’s also a lot more terrifying up close, with glowing red eyes and rows upon rows of needle-like teeth stretching back down its throat. Its hair falls in long waterfalls over its face and shoulders, smooth and black as the ice beneath him. 

“Watch out for its friends,” Bill warns when Dipper gets within reaching distance of the frozen creature. Bill is bent over the ice with his ear close to the surface, squinting across the lake. “They’ll have heard the thing’s distress signal.”

“In and out, like ripping off a band-aid,” Dipper mutters, getting closer to the Qalupalik while Bill lingers back, still keeping watch over the surface of the ice. He reaches out, avoiding looking at those rows of bone-chilling teeth or at the sinister red eyes, and lifts a lock of the slick black hair. They don’t need a lot, just about a handful, so he makes quick work of snipping the hair from the creature’s massive head and dropping it into his jar of preservation. The hair is slimy, he notes with a gag, like seaweed. The locks he’s already collected sit like eels at the bottom of his jar, and once it’s half full, he decides that’s got to be  _ more  _ than enough. 

It’s just when he’s screwing the lid on the jar, thanking his lucky stars that the mission had been easier than expected, that Bill’s voice erupts in a warning shout before it’s overtaken by the deafening sound of cracking ice to Dipper’s left. He only has a second to brace himself before he’s tumbling forward into the frigid water. 

The reaction is instant, his body doesn’t give him even a second to be shocked about it before he’s being suffocated by the cold. Every nerve in his body reacts, flaring up in alarm, and he makes the mistake of opening his mouth in an airless gasp. His lungs are flooded with water, and he reaches a hand up to claw at the ice’s surface above his head, when a squishy taloned hand wraps around his calf. He looks down and sees a pair of glowing red orbs, and  _ fuck  _ do they look scarier in the hazy black deep of the lake. He sends a weak kick down at its face, still clawing numb hands up towards the surface, and the Qalupalik responds by yanking him down, deeper and deeper. In only a matter of moments, the light from the break in the ice has faded into the distance, replaced only by that bone-chilling red glow.

Hot, spiking fear collides with that same sinking feeling of dread from before, and suddenly he’s throwing his hands forward with a wordless surge of magic. The inky black of the lake’s bottom is overtaken by a blinding white flash across his vision, and he has half a moment to wonder what the fuck he’s just done before his consciousness is completely overtaken by the light. 


	6. Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the sweet comments so far!! I'm seriously so thrilled that there are still people out there who are willing to read a work in progress fic for such an old (ish) fandom :DD enjoy!!
> 
> also just a little heads-up, i'm doing some reworking on some of the chapters so the updates from here on out might be a bit less consistent, I'll still try to get something up every week though!! see you all soon!

Bill had been  _ so  _ close to grabbing the kid’s arm before he fell in. Not that he  _ cares  _ about Dipper or anything, in fact he’ll probably have to hide a few laughs on their way back to the Shack while the kid shivers like a leaf in the wind. But he does care about the spell, and having Dipper alive and well is important to that end goal. 

The second Qalupalik screams and lunges at Bill, but he sidesteps the beast easily, driving the point of his shears into the creature’s neck. He ignores the queasy feeling that always twirls around in his stomach whenever this human shell witnesses extreme violence, turning away from the corpse and back to the shards of ice framing the hole Dipper had gone tumbling into after the ice ruptured over the second beast. 

Except… the hole is empty. The Qalupalik are getting smart, abandoning the humming and tapping noises that announce their presence, but Bill had only noticed the second one while he observed the ice. Had there perhaps been a third that had gone undetected? If there was…

“Starhead!” Bill shouts, staggering towards the opening. Oh, this is bad, he can’t go back to the Shack without the kid, let alone perform the spell. “Dipper!” he tries again, but the water is still. Not even a string of bubbles floating up to show him where the kid might’ve sunk. 

Bill’s magic isn’t strong enough to save him, not by a long shot. And if Dipper’s head had been under the water during the gasp response that usually accompanies a human’s plunge into ice, then he might be too busy drowning to get himself out. 

Bill imagines Dipper’s face pale and blue, warm brown eyes open and lifelessly glazed over, and something tingling and desperate spikes through his chest. He rears back, ready to dive into the hole after him. 

But then, a glimmer of bluish white light about the size of Bill’s fist appears distantly under the murky water. Bill narrows his eyes, trying to see if it's far away or just that small, when suddenly the light gets bigger, brighter, surging towards the surface with a violent urgency. 

He barely has enough time to stagger back from the opening and run in the opposite direction when Dipper is erupting through the surface, hurling icy shrapnel in every direction.

Bill gapes up at the kid, who is floating in the air over the now massive hole, nearly twenty feet in diameter. Dipper is surrounded by a blinding white light, and the same light beams from his eyes and palms. His clothes and hair whip around his body as if affected by a strong wind, but the air is almost chokingly still. The hair on Bill’s neck raises, his breath coming in short gasps from the magically charged energy radiating from the boy who floats a few feet in the air like a god. 

Dipper stays there, floating and gazing at Bill with an empty expression for a few moments, before the light in his eyes and palms are flickering away, revealing his wide brown eyes underneath. Then the light goes out completely, and Dipper’s eyes flutter shut as he falls back into the water. 

Bill doesn’t hesitate this time, diving into the frozen depths and swimming towards the boy floating unconsciously in the water. The cold really is fucking uncomfortable, cramping his muscles and sending his breathing into sharp gasps. He cringes at how Dipper must’ve felt, trying to breathe in the water just a few degrees shy of solid ice as a horrible monster drags him nearly to the bottom of the lake, if the distant white glimmer Bill had seen before is anything to go by. 

He drags Dipper back to the broken surface of the ice, shivering so hard he can barely hold on as he carries the kid back to the shore where their backpacks and clothes are. He lays Dipper down on the ground, noticing first the jar of Qalupalik hairs still clutched in his left hand, and second the unsettling stillness of his body. Dipper isn’t shivering. 

That can’t be good.

Despite his shaking hands, Bill manages to peel the soaking shirt from Dipper’s body and toss it aside, taking the jar that the crazy fucker somehow held onto as his frail human shell shut down and placing it gently in Dipper’s backpack. Then he pulls out the jacket Dipper had brought, soft and the color of pine leaves, and stretches it over Dipper’s head, looping his hands through the sleeves. He still hasn’t woken up or started shivering yet, so Bill reaches for his own violently ugly hoodie that he wears so often because he knows Dipper doesn’t like it and moves to put it on Dipper, before deciding against it. He can’t have his own body failing and leaving them stranded, so instead, he peels off his own shirt, taking a second to admire the way it adheres to the sculpted abs of his human body ( _ honestly Axolotl, you spoil me! _ ) and slips the hoodie over his own head. He burrows into the dry warmth, suddenly realizing why Dipper hates the cold so much, it really is miserable when it gets bad enough. 

He tucks Dipper into the brown bomber jacket and swaddles the red scarf around his neck, casting a light warming charm over the tips of his soft brown hair. He can’t warm any of the strands close to his head, the threat of boiling blood from earlier being very much real. Lastly, he strips Dipper of his boots and the grey sweatpants he’d been wearing under his snow pants, sparing the kid the embarrassment of taking off his boxers. Though he’d love to see the scarlet of Dipper’s blush afterwards, Bill doesn’t want to lose the kid’s trust. 

With Dipper in fresh, dry clothes, Bill slings their backpacks over his shoulder and scoops the kid into his arms, rolling his eyes not for the first time at how tiny he is. Seriously, how does Dipper defeat  _ anything  _ if he’s as light as a bird? Then, memories of the air practically singing with magical energy as Dipper had emerged from the lake surrounded in white light remind Bill that though the kid is little, he certainly isn’t powerless. 

The light is concerning. In all his years terrorizing the mortal dimension, Bill has never once encountered a mage who could summon enough raw magical energy to create such a reaction. Then again, he’s also never seen a mortal pick up magic as quickly as Dipper has, so perhaps all mages have that same potential, they’ve just never gotten to that level?

No, that can’t be it. Dipper still gets a little dizzy after large blasting spells. In order to summon the kind of power required to launch himself through hundreds of feet of water, hover in the air, cause light to spill out of his eyes and hands, and most likely kill whatever Qalupalik had been unlucky enough to cross paths with Dipper Pines, he would’ve needed to be at least at a high elf’s level of magical ability, if not equal with Bill’s demon self. 

How Dipper managed to harness that kind of magic is beyond Bill, though he has a sinking suspicion that it has everything to do with whatever had tried to kill Dipper days ago. Perhaps it saw Dipper’s potential and felt threatened by it? That would make the most sense, but once again, what ancient being felt threatened by a mortal playing with magic? A stupid one, Bill muses, which is almost worse than a smart one. 

Halfway back to the Shack, Dipper starts to shake in Bill’s arms, unconsciously burrowing closer to his chest. Bill winces and holds on tighter. Dipper had said something once about Bill running ridiculously hot, and Bill had teased him for it mercilessly. Now he finds himself mentally thanking whatever strings the Axolotl pulled when forming this human shell in order to make it so he can best protect the boy swaddled in his arms. Bill doesn’t know how warm a human body is  _ supposed  _ to feel but judging by the way Dipper now reacts to Bill’s proximity, he's starting to trust Dipper’s diagnosis. 

When he finally breaks through the treeline and into the clearing where the Mystery Shack’s property begins, Dipper still hasn’t woken up, but his shivering has decreased significantly, a healthy flush returned to his cheeks. The lights are off inside, so Bill assumes that the rest of the family must still be asleep. It’s a Thursday morning in the dead of winter, which means not a lot of tourists will be carding through anytime soon. The Shack must be closed today. 

His arms still full of sleepy shivering Dipper, Bill murmurs a quick  _ recludo  _ to open the door, cursing the way that small amount of magic had made him a bit lightheaded. The warm air inside envelopes his chilled skin, and he sighs with pleasure. He uses his foot to kick the door shut as quietly as he can and creeps up the stairs to Dipper’s room. Once inside, he lays the kid onto his bed, tucking him snugly under the covers, and damn it, he’s still not showing any signs of waking up. He wants to ask about the weird white light, but first he needs to make sure the stupid human doesn’t die of coldness. 

When he pulls away, Dipper’s shivering starts acting up even worse than before. So maybe he’d been right about Bill running ‘ridiculously’ hot. 

“I’ll be right back, Starhead,” Bill whispers. He takes the stairs down two at a time, yanking off his still dripping pants and underwear and changing into drier, warmer alternatives. At last, the blood in his body begins to right itself back to its natural temperature, and when he shivers it’s not from the cold but from the relieved pleasure of being out of the unforgiving frozen Gravity Falls landscape. For real,  _ fuck  _ snow. 

Returning to Dipper’s room, he finds the kid still shivering. Rolling his eyes, Bill climbs into the bed beside him, tucking the blanket around the both of them in order to keep Dipper as warm as possible. Then he circles his arms around Dipper, one arm beneath his head and the other curled around his thin waist. Almost immediately, Dipper melts against him, the tremors in his muscles fading into the occasional sleepy twitch. He lets out a sigh against Bill’s throat, where he’s tucked his chilly face. 

Bill smirks. He'll have to tease the kid for this later,  _ after  _ he wakes up, healthy and alive. 

Because he  _ will  _ wake up. He has to.

Dipper wakes up blissfully warm. The last thing he remembers is that frigid lake water invading his body and lungs, his muscles going numb around the Qalupalik’s grip, so when he opens his eyes he’s almost afraid of what he’ll see. Swaddled in warmth and softness, it feels like a dream, like he’s already dead. 

Instead of the afterlife, he sees the long, smooth column of Bill’s throat, the man’s chin tucked securely over Dipper’s head. He pulls back as his eyes adjust, and when Bill speaks he can feel the rumble of it in his chest where Dipper’s hands are curled in Bill’s hoodie. 

“Finally, I was starting to get worried,” Bill scolds. 

“What happened?” Dipper asks, reluctantly untangling himself from Bill’s grasp and trying to stifle the blush that erupts on his cheeks. How many times is he going to accidentally wake up cuddled close to Bill’s body? Get it together, Pines!

Bill props himself up on his elbow, his body blocking Dipper from getting off the bed. “What do you remember?” he asks neutrally. Dipper blinks at him owlishly, the memory of this morning feeling like it happened a thousand years ago.

“Um… A second Qalupalik got out of the water, and I fell in,” Dipper reports, a bit wary. The whole incident is starting to feel more like a dream in his head, even the remembered pain of being submerged in icy water has been replaced by the comforting warmth of his bed. “I tried to swim back up but another one grabbed my leg and started dragging me down, so I… I shot magic at it?” Dipper guesses. It had been a rush of the moment decision, he hadn’t really thought about what to do. He’d just done it. 

“Shot magic,” Bill repeats, voice flat. “Please, elaborate.”

“I don’t know, I just… I wanted to get out of there, so I did. I wanted to kill the Qalupalik, so I did. It just kinda happened,” Dipper fumbles around for an explanation even though he doesn’t know what it could be. He’s starting to see why Bill sounds a bit incredulous now. 

“So, essentially, you completed the root definition of magic, turning desire into action, without any spell or incantation to get you there. Your desire was just strong enough that your action fell into place,” Bill says it like Dipper has just admitted to killing a man just for the thrill of it, so Dipper is more than a little nervous to nod his head ‘yes.’

“I guess,” Dipper mutters. 

“Do you remember exactly  _ how  _ you did all that?” Bill asks.

“No, the last thing—”

“Okay, well I do. And it was completely fucking terrifying, Starhead,” Bill interrupts. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, pacing back and forth around Dipper’s room. “One minute, I’m trying not to barf because I just killed a stupid Qalupalik—why does that happen? I don’t even care about those things,” Bill murmurs the end, mostly to himself.

“Empathy’s a bitch,” Dipper says weakly. Bill stops pacing and looks at him, eyes widening as if Dipper had revealed the secrets of the universe.

“Is  _ that _ what that is?” Bill whispers. Then his face goes stony again and he goes back to pacing, not looking in Dipper’s direction. “Whatever, one minute I’m doing that, the next I’m getting ready to dive in to get you from wherever the fuck you sank, when suddenly this beacon of blueish white light comes crashing up from the water, and there you are. Floating in the air, shooting massive chunks of ice left and right, your eyes and hands are glowing this creepy white light, Dipper, you looked like you were  _ possessed— _ No, you looked like you were a demon yourself! What. The hell. Happened?” Bill demands, his last four words punctuated by his finger poking into Dipper’s chest. 

“I’m telling you, I don’t know,” Dipper confesses. “Whenever that white light takes over I lose track of myself, I don’t realize it’s happened until it’s over.”

“This has happened to you before?!” Bill roars, “Why haven’t you told me?”

“I did! After the  _ web in the wind  _ spell, I kept glitching and forgetting where I was, remember?” Dipper protest. “It was the same thing. And I’ve been having these weird nightmares lately, I don’t remember what they’re about but I always wake up with that white light flickering over my eyes.”

“How long has that been going on?” Bill asks. Dipper shrugs with a guilty sigh. 

“Like, a week? Maybe more… Like I said, it’s hard for me to remember.”

“Why were you keeping quiet about it, Starhead?” Bill asks, but his voice sounds more like a plea. It catches Dipper off guard, he almost forgets to answer. 

“I didn’t think it mattered, and besides, talking about it wouldn’t help, the nightmares would still happen.”

“Of course it matters, Dipper! This is some seriously dangerous shit!” Bill seethes. 

“Then let’s go do the spell and get to the bottom of it!” Dipper stands up a little too fast and winces at the sudden pressure on his temples as his vision goes spotty. 

“Nice try, idiot. You’re about to pass out,” Bill grumbles.

“No, it’s just head rush, I’m fine,” Dipper blinks away the lightheadedness, firmly ignoring his wobbly legs. 

“You’re probably starving,” Bill mutters, fishing through his backpack then pressing a protein bar into Dipper’s palm. “I want you to eat at least two of these before you even think about doing more magic.” 

Dipper frowns and unwraps the bar, using magic to float it up to his mouth out of spite. He takes a bite and chews, maintaining eye contact with Bill the entire time. Bill’s face twists strangely, then to Dipper’s surprise, he begins to laugh. 

“You cheeky little shit,” Bill curses almost hysterically. He looks down at his hands, as if he’d startled even himself, then shakes his head. “Let’s not almost die anymore, okay Starhead?” 

“Okay,” Dipper breathes. 

An hour later Dipper is back out in the snow, trudging through it in a set of sneakers and some wooly socks because his boots had gotten soaked during his plunge into the lake. He humphs through the jagged icy breaths that shoot down his throat each time he tries to inhale, pointedly  _ ignoring  _ the cramping numbness creeping up his toes. He’d told Bill that he could do it, and he can. He  _ can.  _ He just needs to get his discomfort under control. For some reason, whenever he gets too cold or too worked up, that annoying white flashing shows up and Bill gets this  _ look  _ on his face, like Dipper’s an infant with a bomb strapped to his chest. 

A shiver thrashes its way down Dipper’s spine.

He ignores it. 

“Alright, once we get to the clearing, you’ll draw the array while I prep the potions. Then all you’ll need to do is mix the ingredients, starting at the ninth house and working backwards—”

“From horizon to horizon, I know, Bill!” Dipper rolls his eyes. The steady crunch of snow under Bill’s feet, just a few paces behind him, roars in his aching ears. Has Bill always been this loud?

Through the oppressive silence of the snowcover, every little sound seems to set Dipper on edge. It definitely isn’t helping his whole  _ it’s totally chill, I’m not going to detonate anytime soon, I’m just vibing  _ front. 

“Right,” Bill sounds slighted, like he wants to say more, but he’s debating if that would be a good idea. Dipper smirks. Yeah, let him squirm for a bit, see how his own medicine tastes. 

_ Wait,  _ Dipper shakes the wicked smirk from his face.  _ That’s not right.  _

The weather is making him moody, probably. That’s all this is, he’s just throwing a bit of a prissy fit because he’s got a case of the sniffles. Per the norm, he’s making a big deal out of everything because he’s in a bad mood. 

He’s not this vicious. It’s just the cold. 

A bird chirps something quiet and twittering—it catches Dipper off guard, but he smiles. They probably weren’t expecting to need to hibernate so soon. 

Bill sighs behind him, and a flash of anger chokes Dipper like a vice. Why can’t he just stay  _ silent  _ for  _ five minutes,  _ stupid demon—

All of a sudden, Dipper feels a sticky, panicky rage rip through him, wiping out the cold and surging outwards from his chest, flooding through to his fingertips and setting his heart racing again.

Somehow, in all his anxious clamber to hide his discomfort, he’d forgotten why he was so desperate to do the spell. 

In  _ minutes,  _ Dipper would lay eyes on his friend and know the truth, once and for all. And he’ll feel so  _ stupid  _ when it all blows up in his face. So maybe Dipper’s unconsciously preparing to hate him. It’s a protective measure, for when he’s inevitably disappointed.

Because it’s a matter of course that he’ll be disappointed—fortune does not favor a Pines that trusts a demon. That’s just not the way these things go. 

And now these are his last moments while still in… in what, a truce? With Bill? He should be trying his best to enjoy it right now, he should be letting Bill make those stupid innunuendo jokes that he seems to adore so much and push him away when he teases, they should be laughing as they dart between the trees, tossing harmless spells at each other until Bill is breathless from the excessive magic use on his body and Dipper is breathless from the way that stupid crooked smile makes his heart feel. 

That’s another thing he doesn’t want to think about—how rakishly attractive Bill can get (when he’s not being a total asshole). Dipper is secure enough to admit that Bill is  _ hot,  _ okay, but it’s the same kind of attraction he feels towards celebrities or models. Objectively, they’re attractive, yes. But he’s not  _ in love  _ or anything. He couldn’t be in love with a demon. Are demons even capable of love?

No,  _ no,  _ he can’t think about this right now. There’s too much fear bottled up in his chest, caged beneath his hollow, straining ribs. These are the last moments he has to spend with Bill before everything likely comes crashing down on him, and he can’t even try to savor it, act normal. Time weighs heavily down on him, dragging at him with grabby hands as shivers trickle over his skin. He wants to fall back into that easy banter that he and Bill shared in the weeks leading up to  _ web in the wind,  _ but he knows if he speaks, his voice will break, his strength will falter, his heart will shatter—better to stay silent and feed his frustration than give into the alternative. 

“You remember the incantation?” Bill asks quietly. A pang of guilt drops in Dipper’s stomach like a cold stone at the defeated lilt of his voice. Then it’s replaced by a wave of anger, hot and arid like smoke and sparks spitting from his sternum and out his throat. Either Bill’s demonic manipulation has struck again, in making Dipper feel sorry for him again, or he really  _ truly  _ doesn’t know why Dipper is acting so cold all of a sudden. 

A wave of nausea overtakes Dipper’s body as he wonders which one is worse. 

The demon option, of course. A demon is always the worst case scenario, no matter what the scenario. 

Still, Dipper is too cowardly to glance back and steal a glance at his friend’s ( _ friend,  _ Dipper grimaces,  _ we’re friends, aren’t we _ ?) face, too terrified of the way it’ll make him feel if those strange yellow eyes are crestfallen. 

“Yeah, I remember,” Dipper rasps. The words for the spell are… painfully simple.  _ Ostende mihi.  _ Show me. Dipper will stand in the middle of a circle that he’ll scorch into the earth of that clearing, with strangely colored jars stood at attention on the outermost edge of the array, and he’ll ask his magic to show him. Show him what he’s dreading to see. 

Bill had said once that spells don’t mean anything if the caster doesn’t mean it either. Ordinary mages can’t point a wand at some ordinary citizens and say  _ volo enim vos mortuos  _ unless they truly desire to see that person dead. Dipper had worried, then, if he’d be able to convincingly say the spell’s trigger words—if he’ll really want the magical goggles to show him the truth. 

But then Bill had barked out a laugh and nudged Dipper’s cheek with the pads of his knuckles and said, “Of course, you’re a freak of nature. I’m sure you could convince your magic that you wanted  _ anything  _ if you just said it out loud.”

The words had hardly been a comfort, though. Now Dipper is terrified that he’ll accidentally read some text in Latin aloud and end up turning his sister’s skin inside out. He’s lucky, he supposes, that magic doesn’t work really well in English. 

“There are no rules with English,” Bill had said in explanation when Dipper asked, because of course Dipper had asked. He’d depended on Bill for  _ everything  _ magic-related practically since the day the guy moved in. Is Dipper really so easily manipulated that only a few charming smiles and magical stories had made him a fool? He can’t believe he’d not been more careful, all this time he must’ve spent fumbling around while Bill laughed at his naivete behind his back, it leaves a bitter taste in Dipper’s mouth. 

“It’s a bullshit language built on bullshit foundations—” Bill continued, “an amalgamation of all the foes the English lost to when they were figuring out what to do with themselves. English was built by failure, and magic doesn’t like failure. It would be like trying to start a fire out of ice cubes. The magic just doesn’t catch on English words. Latin, on the other hand, is an influencer language. It seeped its way into all sorts of different languages without ever changing its own integrity. It remained so stubbornly strong that it went completely extinct rather than adapt to the world changing around it. Speaking magic words in Latin is like setting a match to gasoline.”

It’s all so dreadfully interesting. Dipper wishes he had more time, he needs more  _ time _ —

He steps into the clearing, ignoring the way his breath feels like it’s been punched out of his body. Finally chancing a glance back at his partner in crime, Dipper finds Bill’s face… carefully blank. 

Bill inclines his head towards the middle of the clearing, and the yellow curls of hair over his face bob down, covering his left eye. Dipper nods and goes over to the biggest, flattest part of the clearing and points his finger downward. 

“ _ Ardenti atramento _ ,” he commands, and a thin line of fire, like liquid gold, shoots down into the dirt, instantly melting away the snow anywhere within Dipper’s scorching spell’s range. He makes quick work of the symbols and angles of the zodiac, he’s studied it enough that it’s practically burned into his retinas. 

Once it’s done, Bill’s already set up the mason jars full of sludgy magical residues on each of their assigned positions, and Dipper goes up to them to add the final ingredients, pushing his magic into each movement, each clockwise turn of each cinnamon bark stick, each pinch of pulverized ghost granite, everything. A potion made without the attention of magic is just a gross soup full of magic animal parts. He needs to make sure he’s activating whatever switch needs to be flipped for the jars to have their desired effect.

Focusing on this—on his mission—is a bit of a relief. He doesn’t need to worry if these potions will betray him, or if the array he’s burned into the ground has been lying about its identity. He just needs to flex his magic muscle and hold it, which happens to be something he’s very good at. 

Though, in truth, magic for him is more like easing the lid off a shaken up soda bottle. He needs to hold on tight, keep intensely in control, or else the whole thing might rocket out of his hands, shattering and sending broken glass, plastic, and sticky soda pop all over everything. Except, instead of causing a minor kitchen mess, he’d be blowing up nearby trees and zapping the air so full of magic it would hurt to breathe it in. Of course, he’s taking Bill’s word for it on the second point. He’s never had trouble breathing his own magic. 

_ Bill’s word.  _ Ugh.  _ Bill Cipher’s word.  _

Dipper shakes that thought away. Cipher was killed in the war. His family watched it happen. They’d almost lost Stan, too, the blast had been so thorough in erasing him. His Bill might be a demon, but he’s probably not Cipher. 

But Dipper can't rule out the possibility. 

“Shut up, shut  _ up, _ ” he hisses at himself. Dipper’s brain is twisting itself in knots, ceaselessly twisting around those fluttery ‘what-ifs.’ He feels like he’s playing a constant game of  _ he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not _ —but—no, that’s… that’s too close to home. The point is, the thoughts are getting redundant, and he really just wants this whole thing to be over with so he can decide how to a mortal like himself might kill Bill Cipher twice. 

Heaving a resigned sigh, he stands up in the center of the zodiac, eyes trained on the tall, handsome man in front of him. And since Dipper is weak, he’s pathetic, he’s human, he takes a moment to just drink it all in. He wants to spend more time savoring the sight of Bill, unblemished by any demonic glow, just ordinary human Bill. 

Bill, in his dark washed jeans that are ripped at the knees (Dipper’s fault, he’d dared Bill to skid like a rockstar across the pebbly clearing floor as he cast a flame spell, and wasn’t expecting Bill to actually  _ do it _ ).

Bill, wearing a flamboyant pink hoodie that read,  _ hook, line, and sneaker!  _ accompanied by a drawing of a pair of mysterious fish shoes that Stan had made by stapling the tails of two salmon to the heels of a shoplifted pair of light-up Sketchers. 

That exhibit had been a hit. Dipper cannot imagine why. 

Bill, with all his smooth copper skin, hot and silky as Sahara sand, unblemished and unmarred as glass. Compared to the mottled mess that is Dipper, whose skin is really more scar tissue than not, Bill’s glossy appearance tends to lean in the direction of… inhuman. 

Well, there goes the final plea of the hormonal side of Dipper’s brain before they cast the spell. Dipper’s appreciation for Bill’s mortal attractiveness is a butterfly caught in the blowtorch of his other emotions, lasting only a split second before it drifts away, ash on the wind. 

“Right, okay, it’s finally happening,” Bill nods, looking rather pleased with the state of the clearing. He turns his piercing yellow gaze to focus entirely on Dipper, and for once Dipper kinda wants to look away. What was once so captivating is now only serving as a harsh reminder of his pliant  _ need  _ to trust Bill, no matter what. He doesn’t want it to sting, when he finally sees it.

When he finally sees Bill Cipher. 

“Okay, I’ll need to be out of your sight, so I’m gonna go about a dozen yards into the forest behind you—”

“What,” Dipper asks, but it sounds more like a statement of fact, a grave, croaking fact.  _ What.  _

“I need to be out of sight,” Bill repeats. “Dipper, we talked about this already, you can’t have any life form more complex than a bug or a tree in your immediate line of vision when you cast the spell, it’ll mix up the equilibrium, so the auras don’t glow as bright. Like setting a scale to zero out a certain weight. We need you to be able to detect anything, and that means levelling out your line of sight completely.”

Dipper does remember that, he remembers Bill giving the same metaphor about the scale and the auras, but he’d always thought—he’d assumed—just… Bill has never not been by his side. He’d been relying on that, to see the truth, it was the whole goddamned reason for casting the spell—

No, the reason for casting the spell is to catch whatever is trying to kill Dipper. 

But uncovering Bill for a manipulating, cheating demon is more important.

When did he start prioritizing Bill’s identity over his own life? This is probably Bill’s fault. It’s just like him to make Dipper forget about the fact that he’s the target for an assassination attempt. 

(But the spell was  _ Bill’s  _ idea!!)

Fuck, Bill is leaving, he’s backing into the forest behind Dipper, rolling his eyes like Dipper is acting childlishly, and maybe he is, but  _ fuck,  _ Dipper can’t let this chance slip through his fingers—

“Wait!” Dipper cries. His voice is desperate, thick and gets stuck in his throat. “I—don’t go, please don’t go,” he’s breathless, he’s  _ begging,  _ but Bill has stopped mid-stride to stare at him. Big, golden pools are scrutinizing him like he’s trying to rip Dipper apart from the inside out, that sinfully red mouth dropped open slightly to gape at him. 

Bill’s gazing at him like… actually, Dipper doesn’t really know what the expression on Bill’s face is. He looks confused, yes, and startled, but there’s something else underneath. Something… warm.

“Why?” Bill asks. Fire crackles behind his eyes, a glint that shoots a flash of something like anxiety through Dipper’s chest, but it’s hotter than anxiety. It spreads, melting into his bones. Bill doesn’t look angry. It’s not a furious kind of heat—not an inferno eating up a forest—it’s like butter melting over a hot pan. Slow, thick, with the potential to sting if Dipper gets too close. 

He wonders what he’s done to unlock this reaction in Bill.

(He wonders if he could do it again?)

“I…” Dipper licks his lips and almost fools himself into thinking that Bill traces the motion with his eyes. Why does he need Bill here? For reasons other than possibly exposing him as his worst enemy? “Because I… um…”

“Spit it out, Starhead,” Bill’s voice is so low it’s almost a purr. Why does Bill seem so interested in Dipper’s desperation? Perhaps he… likes to feel wanted? Needed, even? It would make sense, if he’s a demon then he’d be naturally inclined to people desperate enough to seek his help. And if he’s human, then maybe he feels bad for always needing things from other people, what with his amnesia and without a home of his own. Not that Dipper has ever let Bill feel like an imposition in their lives, Bill is a guest, a treasured friend. A possible demon. 

Damn it, his brain is tying knots again. 

Well, the least Dipper can do is take advantage of this. Whatever  _ this  _ is, Bill likes it, and if he likes it, he’ll stick around. That’s all Dipper needs. 

“I feel safer when you’re close to me,” he murmurs, the words slipping off his tongue better than he’d expected. He’s never been a very good liar—so maybe it wasn’t entirely a lie? No, that’s ridiculous. Nobody would feel  _ safe  _ around a  _ demon.  _

Again, a  _ possible  _ demon. 

_ Fuck,  _ why does everything in Dipper’s life have to be so complicated?

Bill’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. 

“Huh,” he says after a couple tense seconds that have Dipper’s heart thumping like it’s been jolted by an electrical charge. “Interesting.”

“I just—could you please stay?” Dipper stammers, twisting his hands and biting his tongue to keep himself from screaming with frustrated anxiety, but it doesn’t last long. Bill is already taking long strides across the clearing towards him until they’re nearly chest to chest. 

Dipper doesn’t dare move a muscle. 

“Okay,” Bill says quietly. “How about this?”

Then he slinks around behind Dipper’s body, pressing himself close against Dipper’s back. Dipper’s breath shudders and wheezes out of him on one small puff when Bill’s hands settle on his hips, a firm yet gentle reminder that Bill is close enough to touch yet completely out of sight. 

“Once the spell is cast you can turn around, but until then stay facing forward,” Bill instructs in a low murmur against Dipper’s ear, and he can feel the rumble from Bill’s chest against his back. “I was serious about complex energy signatures messing up the equilibrium.”

“I know,” Dipper says quickly. “I won’t look until I’m done with the spell. But I was serious too.” He tilts his head back a bit so that it bumps against Bill’s shoulder behind him. “Thank you.”

Bill’s hands spasm against his hips, just the briefest of twitches, tightening and pulling them closer. Though Dipper isn’t completely positive that he didn’t imagine it. 

“You’re welcome Starhead,” Bill replies softly, and Dipper might be starting to see what Mabel meant when she said it sounded like a term of endearment. “Now let’s get casting, shall we?”

Dipper can only nod around the knot in his throat, tightening with each passing second. 

At last, the moment of truth, what he’s been anxiously anticipating for  _ weeks _ —so why does it feel so awful? 

Dipper shoves that grief down. He’ll deal with it later. Right now the most important thing is casting this spell. 

The spell is actually rather simple, despite the trouble they had to go through in order to secure its components. After the zodiac is drawn, all that needs to happen is for a competent mage to stand in the center and say  _ ostende mihi _ ; Latin for  _ show me.  _

And so, with very little time to wonder if he’s making a mistake, Dipper looks out at the treeline ahead of him and bellows it.  __

“ _ Ostende mihi! _ ”

The world around him goes molten.

The flashes of white Dipper’s grown to expect accompanying his magic crowd his vision, practically consuming him—body, mind, and soul. It’s hot—too hot—in a strangely familiar sort of way, like he’s being burned by a fire he collected the logs for himself. He grits his teeth under the intensifying pressure, how the heat and light grows more and more unbearable until he can’t even  _ think—  _

And then, in an instant, the pain is gone, along with it every other sensation. He no longer needs to breathe or blink or feel, his consciousness completely merged with that brilliant white light. It still hurts, it aches and burns unlike anything he’s ever known, but  _ he is that pain.  _ And there’s no way to flinch away from your own essence.

He doesn’t know how long exactly he remains suspended in that all-consuming light, nor how he finds his way back to reality, but when he does the light is gone and in its wake is left a hazy high-contrast version of the forest before him. The trees seem to shake and quiver outwards from their solid forms in small vibrations of ruddy orange and green, and somehow Dipper  _ knows  _ that their aura is perfectly ordinary despite never seeing them before in this state. 

It’s his magic. His magic is telling him what each aura means, and why. Bill had said this would happen, but he hadn’t quite understood the extent of that intuitive knowledge. It’s not like someone is whispering the answers in his ear, it’s like he’s known all along what the shapes and colors of each aura represent. He’d only needed to press that final button in order to actually  _ see  _ them.

A bug flies by ten feet away, and Dipper would’ve never noticed or cared if not for the brilliant violet trail its wings leave behind as it ambles around the clearing. His magic instincts murmur,  _ ordinary,  _ and he nods, not really  _ there  _ enough to wonder about the mechanics behind the spell. 

No, what he’s really focused on is the warm body pressed behind him. 

“Bill,” he says roughly, “can I turn around now?”

Bill’s hands loosen a little from Dipper’s hips. 

He steps away. 

It feels like goodbye.

“Yeah, you can look.”

Dipper takes a breath that feels all too much like a sob and finally,  _ finally  _ whirls around. 


	7. Poems

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, sorry for dipping for so long haha uhh i have no excuses you haven't heard before. let's all just be friends okay? thanks for all the support so far, i can't wait to take you all on this adventure with me!

In the middle of the clearing Bill glows like a golden god. 

Dandelion hues bleed off of him in rich swirling whorls like thick ink through water. His strange yellow eyes leave tracks behind their movements in a brilliant cyan blue and when he takes a step back his footprints imprint a deep ruby red into the snow.

It’s a red that Dipper’s magic identifies as human. 

_ Human. Mortal. Flesh and blood. Human.  _

Dipper’s heart throbs out of his chest, his breath releasing all the oxygen he has left in his body in one shuddering exhale. The relief is like a palpable thing inside him, making him dizzy with the force of it. He watches Bill with the goofiest smile on his face as the other man tilts his head and looks back at him, oblivious to Dipper’s overwhelming emotions. 

Bill had been telling the truth. All this time, from the moment Dipper found him in the forest months ago. Every smirk, every laugh, every concerned furrow of those dark eyebrows had been the result of Bill’s absolute humanity. Dipper should’ve never doubted him—this man had always been capable of so much  _ more  _ than the demon that shared his name. Even when inhabiting a human body Bill Cipher was completely lacking in empathy and compassion, traits that are essential to the true mortal experience. Even when this Bill was being a total asshole there still was always an element of caring to it, something Dipper had started to take for granted once his trust in Bill began to dissolve. 

_ Trust no one.  _

Well not anymore. Dipper won’t be tearing himself apart over those pained, cynical, destructive words ever again. At least, not when it comes to Bill. Dipper’s trust in the man has been completely solidified. 

So solidified, in fact, that before Dipper really has time to think about what he’s doing, he’s lunging forward and pressing his lips to Bill’s in a bruising kiss. 

It’s less of a kiss and more of an adrenaline-filled punch in the face, but Dipper doesn’t exactly care. After just a few seconds he pulls away, dropping back down from the tips of his toes and onto the snow, smiling like an idiot. Bill is grinning too, his eyebrows shot up in pleasant surprise. His hands are still sitting at Dipper’s waist, and Dipper has a handful of Bill’s hoodie clenched at his shoulder. 

“Jeez Starhead, I know you were nervous about the spell, but not  _ that  _ nervous,” Bill teases. “You never  _ actually  _ had anything to worry about.” Dipper shrugs and looks down at his feet, still smiling.

“Yeah, I guess not,” he replies. Their footprints in the snow glow a matching shade of scarlet that once again takes Dipper’s breath away. 

A warm hand finds Dipper’s chin, tilting his head back up to meet Bill’s brilliant golden eyes. 

“Told you,” Bill says smugly, then he bends down close to Dipper’s face and kisses him again. 

Bill is unfairly good at kissing. The hand at Dipper’s waist wraps tighter around his body, pulling them so close together that Dipper can feel the warmth of Bill all down his front. Dipper’s balancing precariously on his tiptoes because Bill is freakishly tall and Dipper can’t seem to get enough of him, but Bill holds them together steady, and Dipper can only cling to the other man’s body like a lifeline as Bill ravishes his lips as if he’s trying to conquer them. 

The hand that had been cradling Dipper’s chin slips around to the back of Dipper’s head and abruptly fists in the hair at the sensitive nape of his neck. Dipper groans and surges closer, licking into Bill’s mouth like they’re the only two people in existence, the world narrowed to just Bill’s teeth grazing along Dipper’s lip, Bill’s tongue on his tongue. 

Kissing Bill feels like every cell in Dipper’s body has caught fire. His skin is an electric wire, his heart slams against his bones as if it wants to rattle them into dust, his fingers tremble where they’re hooked in the soft fabric of Bill’s hoodie from the gut-melting, earth-shattering  _ need  _ raging through his veins. 

Bill draws back, panting. 

His pupils have almost completely overtaken his irises, leaving only the barest thread of a glimmering golden ring surrounding the dark pit. Dipper doubts he looks much better, in fact he’s almost certain he looks like an absolute  _ mess.  _

Confirming Dipper’s suspicions, Bill runs a thumb across Dipper’s tender swollen lips with a smirk. “Defilement looks good on you, Starhead,” he purrs, and the shiver that shoots down Dipper’s spine has nothing to do with the chilly winter air. 

Dipper manages to roll his eyes, lightly swatting Bill’s shoulder. “Hey, my kiss was just for celebration.  _ You’re  _ the one that couldn’t resist.”

“Ohh,  _ right.  _ So all those needy little moans of yours were just out of pity for me,” Bill says in a sarcastic drawl close to Dipper’s ear, and he feels his cheeks go hot with embarrassment. 

“Shut up,” Dipper grumbles, and he can feel the vibrations of Bill’s laugh against his chest where they’re still pressed together. 

“Still in denial, are we? How tragic,” Bill sighs in mock-discouragement. “Guess I have no choice but to be more forceful in my persuasion _. _ ” 

Dipper’s blood goes warm at the implications. 

“I’d like to see you try,” he grumbles, still a little overwhelmed by the flood of emotions swarming through him like a rabid hive of pixies. “For now, let’s maybe do what we came here to accomplish in the first place? And after that…” Dipper disentangles himself from Bill’s grip and steps back, gazing up at the taller man with a mischievous sparkle in his eye. “Do your worst.”

The heat behind Bill’s gaze that Dipper had noticed before floods back full-force—a heat that Dipper thinks he’s starting to recognize as _desire,_ which is terrifying and thrilling in equal parts. “Challenge accepted,” Bill growls.

“Alright,” Dipper giggles almost hysterically, “now tell me what I’m looking for. You said the creature would leave magical traces behind it? What might those look like?”

“It’s different for everyone,” Bill replies, gazing at the trees surrounding the clearing. “Even though the spell was cast exactly the same on both of us, the auras will appear differently depending on our individual knowledge of each species. You have to rely on your magic to tell you if you’re looking at the right thing.”

“Really?” Dipper perks up in curiosity. “What does my aura look like to you?”

Bill turns a calculating eye towards Dipper, who tries not to squirm under the scrutiny, the memory of that furious kiss  _ just moments ago  _ still fresh in his mind. “You’re sort of… fluffy,” Bill gestures vaguely, fingers wiggling. “You’ve got a white cloudlike shape around your head and hands, and there are little fireworks of color flicking around the rest of you like sparks when you move around. The clouds indicate that you’re human, and the sparks tell me you’re magical.”

“Huh,” Dipper looks down at his hands, seeing none of that. Instead his skin bleeds a dark blue shade similar to the yellow glow he’d seen on Bill, and his footprints are still deep red. The swirling, inky colors must indicate magic users to him, then. 

“Look around and see if anything strikes you as particularly… ancient. That will probably be the best pointer to our guy, if he was using  _ web in the wind, _ ” Bill instructs. 

Dipper nods and turns his attention back to the clearing, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Plumes of color and light from various plant and animal life flicker around the edges of his vision, but nothing really strikes his magical intuition. Taking a quick peek at Bill’s frustrated frown, he’s a bit relieved to find them both in the dark about it. 

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bill mutters frustratedly. “A force like this… it  _ had  _ to have been something big. Not just scary monster big, either. Like, potential-to-wreck-the-whole-dimension big. And yet I’m finding absolutely nothing.”

“Where would something that huge even hide?” Dipper asks a little weakly. “You’re talking like it would take up… the entire…” Dipper’s words trail off as he notices something he hadn’t seen before—something so horrifying he’s shocked he didn’t see it before. “ _ Sky, _ ” he breathes, and tilts his head up to gaze at the massive expanse of white above them. 

The sky is completely blotted out. There isn’t even a hint of the sun or clouds above them, only a wide stretch of white mosaic tiles that ripple pastel hues between each shard like an oil spill. Whatever being is up there has an aura so enigmatic even his magic seems to short out, the intuition that had come so easily to him before now responding in strange characters he doesn’t recognize as he looks into the belly of that gigantic beast. 

“No,” Bill gasps. Dipper turns to him, frantic, and sees Bill’s eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them, his mouth parted in shock with his head tilted up at the brilliant white of the sky. 

“What? Who is it?” Dipper asks quickly, tearing his eyes away from Bill and back up at that strange mosaic sky like he’s drawn to it, a moth to a raging magical flame. 

“Impossible!” Bill hisses. “Why are you here?”

Dipper’s gaze searches for some sort of chink in the armor, some  _ clue  _ as to what the massive creature in the sky could be doing, what it could want with them. Finding nothing, he’s left with no choice but to gape, enraptured by the swirling rainbow of colors so bright they’re barely distinguishable from the white. 

Then, the mosaic blinks. 

The tiles Dipper had identified earlier as random shapeless shards of white flicker open and closed, and he realizes with a terror unlike any he’s ever known that each shape is an  _ eye,  _ and each is regarding him with a chilly kind of indifference that betrays absolutely nothing in regards to motive. 

Dread, hot and piercing, chokes its way down Dipper’s throat, and his body goes cold. 

For an instant, everything is blissfully numb. 

Then his magic flares up and overtakes him. 

The white hot flames from every nightmare he’d felt before stab into his being, making him one with the agony. Amidst that all-encompassing white, he manages to blink back the pained tears that threaten to choke him, and as he does the white around him flickers. 

He hiccups, everything hurts, it hurts it hurts it  _ hurts— _

And the white light becomes clearer, more focused. 

He’s managed, maybe for only a few seconds, to separate himself from that physical pain. And in doing so he’s able to see through the blur of his tears, past the wavering agony that had crushed his body and soul, and recognizes that the white light of his magic isn’t actually white at all. 

It’s a mosaic of white, surrounded by swirls of pastel and rainbow. 

He blinks at the mosaic.

The mosaic blinks back. 

Dipper has gone catatonic again, and it’s the absolute  _ last  _ thing Bill should have to worry about right now, but unfortunately Bill is stuck inside this human shell and truly can’t do much but  _ sit there  _ without the stupid kid’s help. 

Cautiously, like approaching a wild animal, he inches nearer to Dipper’s body, which is suspended a few feet in the air and limp, eyes wide open and gazing up at the beast Bill had hoped he’d never run into again. His clothes and hair are completely still, not even ruffled by the light winter breeze that puffs its way through the clearing. 

“Dipper!” he hisses, “Hey, kid! You still in there?”

Dipper does not respond. 

Last time, the kid had found his way out of this state all on his own, falling back down into the icy water the moment he’d accomplished what his magic set out to achieve. This time, Bill doesn’t know what set it off. 

“Starhead?” Bill tries again, reaching a tentative hand out to Dipper’s chest, where earlier Bill had felt a hammering heartbeat pushed tightly against his body, matching his own. 

Bill splays his palm flat against Dipper's chest, pushing, but nothing happens. The kid doesn’t even float backwards, just remains suspended in perfect stasis. 

Bill frowns, pushing a little harder, but Dipper doesn’t budge. Above them, the creature blinks, and Bill curses an ancient swear under his breath. Of  _ course  _ the bastard had to choose  _ now  _ of all times to make his next appearance on the mortal plane, it only happens every couple thousand years or so, why not this year? The year Bill is completely and utterly powerless!

Pondering what the creature could want with Dipper shoots fury and fear through Bill’s mortal soul like a forest fire, unstoppable and uncontrollable. It’s obvious it has something to do with the kid’s magic, which Bill is starting to see is  _ much  _ more powerful than he’d previously thought. 

But really,  _ him?  _ One of the oldest and most powerful beings in any dimensional plane is coming for  _ him _ ? A week ago Bill had watched Dipper accidentally take a sip from a jar of acid rainwater rather than his orange juice just because the cups were right next to each other! How could an ancient being find that bumbling human enticing enough to risk a trip to the mortal plane for him? 

Bill stubbornly ignores the voice in the back of his head that prods at him saying,  _ you’re no better, Bill! Somehow you’ve stopped seeing him as your key to revenge and instead adopted him as your little magic pet! _

“Hey!” Bill roars at the sky, hand still pushing against Dipper’s chest. “Leave this mortal alone! He’s  _ mine _ !”

The beast above doesn’t respond. 

“Did you do this to him?! Are his nightmares your doing, or is he tearing himself apart all on his own?” Bill asks despite knowing he’s only going to be replied with cold indifference. This beast has never cared enough about mortal affairs to interact with them aside from the occasional visit to check on its people, and always those visits end in wars, bloodshed, sacrifice, and death—none of which have ever benefitted Bill. They’re not the  _ fun  _ kinds of chaos, not when they’re built out of fear for something Bill is wary of himself. 

Under Bill’s palm, Dipper’s body glitches. Bill staggers back quickly, just in case the kid isn’t in control of whatever explosion he might set off, but it doesn’t seem like the magic is expanding anywhere beyond just Dipper’s body. In fact, consuming his body seems to be the magic’s only objective, as different parts of Dipper glitch and flicker and sometimes even completely disappear before flicking back to reality. 

That can't be good.

“Dipper,” Bill says warily, stating it like a command. “Don’t do that, come back to normal already before you get stuck like this forever.” While admittedly a little funny, the thought makes something cold and dreadful build in the pit of Bill’s stomach. 

“ _ Dipper! _ ” Bill shouts again, reaching out to the glitching mass before him that flashes in quick, startling strobes of light. Fumbling for the kid’s chest again, Bill’s blood turns to ice when his hand goes straight through. 

He’s vanishing.

Why is he vanishing?!

Bill scrabbles for Dipper’s shoulders, which are still (mostly) solid, and attempts to shake him out of it. They lurch around in erratic motions, never staying corporeal enough for Bill to get a good hold. Each time he thinks he’s got something, his arms are repelled back as if pushed away. By now, Dippers limbs have almost completely lost shape, mere shards of white twirling and reflecting against each other. 

Bill is being forced to watch as Dipper’s own magic eats him alive.

Bill swears loudly and, doing the only thing he _ knows  _ will get a reaction out of the kid—maybe enough to snap him out of whatever fit he’s sent himself into—surges forward and plants a kiss on Dipper’s mouth. 

It had been much more fun when it was  _ Bill  _ tasting  _ Dipper’s  _ desperation, not the other way around. The kid had been so excited to see Bill’s human aura he’d finally cracked under the pressure and given into what both of them knew had been coming for a while. Bill had  _ known  _ that the main reason Dipper was so nervous was because he was expecting to see a demon’s aura on Bill when he cast the spell (though he didn’t account for  _ that  _ being the final straw that broke the stubborn camel’s back). 

Bill isn’t an idiot. He would’ve never suggested they try this particular spell if he hadn’t known for  _ sure  _ that he’d show up as mortal. Thank you, Axolotl. Yes, Bill’s humiliating lack of power on this plane is plenty proof of his  _ temporary  _ mortality. And the spell can’t look through to the past, it only shows the auras of creatures as they are, never as they  _ were.  _

If Bill neglected to mention this to Dipper while they were preparing the spell it’s  _ definitely  _ not because he knows the kid is smart and would most likely connect the dots himself. No way would Bill ever admit that a stupid mortal could see through his carefully constructed manipulations. Never in a million years!

Ignoring the derisive voice in the back of his head that tells him otherwise, Bill focuses on the task at hand, breathing a mental sigh of relief upon finding Dipper’s head still completely corporeal. The moment their lips touch—and Bill almost  _ sneers  _ at the fact that he has to tilt his head up to meet where Dipper is floating in the air—the flickering seems to stutter to a halt, the shards of white magic going still around Dipper’s body. 

Then, slowly, they melt closer together, re-forming into shapes that resemble hands and legs and arms. Bill doesn’t dare move an inch, his brain screaming ‘ _ holy shit I can’t believe that fucking worked?!!?’  _

Ugh, magic is so dramatic.

As the light that’s shining through his eyelids recedes, Bill feels Dipper tense then gasp against his mouth before dropping out of the air. He only falls for a moment, though, before Bill’s arms find his torso and clings tightly, holding Dipper up with his feet dangling in the air.

“Bill?!” Dipper says in a shocked whisper, but Bill shuts him up with another kiss, just taking a moment to breathe the kid in. He honestly has no idea how that stupid idea worked, part of him was honestly preparing for it to be his last goodbye before Dipper faded away. 

Yuck. Feelings. Gross.

“Hey,” Bill murmurs against Dipper’s lips. 

“H-hey,” Dipper replies, tilting his head back a fraction so he can look Bill in the eye, and Bill honestly should’ve taken more time to prepare for the way those warm brown eyes look up close and overwhelming. “You saved me,” Dipper breathes.

“Huh,” Bill mutters, “I guess I did.” 

Funny how that works out, he keeps accidentally saving the life of someone he swore to destroy. 

“Are all those eyes still there?” Dipper asks quietly, a quiver of fear warbling his voice. Oh, right, Bill almost forgot about that. He steals a glance up at the sky and sees pretty much what he’d expected—plain old sky. Now he knows for sure, the beast was only here for Dipper and his magic. Once all that stopped, he slipped back into hiding. 

Cowardly son of an eldritch horror.

“Nope, you scared them all away,” Bill replies with an easy smirk. 

“Really?” Bill can feel the shape of Dipper’s hopeful syllables as they form in the air between them. 

“Yeah. It’s okay, you can look,” Bill says not for the first time today, and realizes that it’s sort of like saying, ‘ _ you can trust me. _ ’ 

Apparently the double meaning is not lost on Dipper, because his amber eyes sparkle with his smile and he bends in close to press the softest of kisses onto Bill’s lips. After a few seconds, he pushes lightly against Bill’s shoulders, signaling for Bill to set him down, and turns his attention up to the now empty sky. 

“What  _ was  _ that thing?” Dipper asks, standing in the middle of the clearing with his hands on his hips. 

“Bad news,” Bill says darkly. “C’mon, let’s head back to the Shack. I’ll explain on the way.”

Dipper nods, worry and determination clouding his expression as he bends to pick up the now expired jars of magic juices. His nose crinkles with disgust as a bit of caterpillar vinegar spills onto his hand, and something fond and unfamiliar twists in Bill’s gut at the sight. 

It’s probably just side effects from experiencing human intimacy, nothing to be too worried about. It’s hard to tell with these things, what’s significant and what’s just a random failing of Bill’s mortal shell. And Dipper is certainly not significant, so therefore Bill should probably not be spending so much time trying to internally justify that tiny little stomach-swoopy feeling.

“You know you could just vanish those,” Bill calls out to Dipper, who is trying to balance several jars in one big stack to carry back to his bag. 

“Isn’t that wasteful though? I mean, after all the trouble we went through to get most of this stuff…” Dipper shivers, most likely remembering the feeling of the suffocating blue water clinging to his body earlier this morning. Had it only been a few hours ago? It feels like months have passed to Bill. Is perceived time distortion significant? Should he be getting that checked out?

“I mean, you can’t really use it anymore, the magic’s already been zapped clean. Now they’re just jars of dirty water,” Bill explains. 

“I guess,” Dipper sighs, dropping the jars onto the snowy ground. “Uhh,  _ discedo! _ ” he waves a lazy hand in the straight-line shape of directing energy Bill had taught him, and the jars blink out of existence, along with a chunk of the ground they were standing on. “Shit,” Dipper groans with resigned frustration, kicking some of the snow in the surrounding area into the small crater to cover it. 

“One of us is going to trip over that next time we come here, Starhead,” Bill snickers. “Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the suspense—it’s going to be you.”

“Bold words from the guy who likes to forget how many stairs there are to the attic and  _ always  _ trips over the last one,” Dipper counters with a smirk. 

“Only in the dark!” Bill protests. 

Dipper laughs and rolls his eyes but doesn’t object, because Bill is 100% right and that last stair is 100% evil. 

Once the jars are properly vanished and the spell’s circle has been mostly stamped out (can’t have random locals thinking there’s another satanic cult running around), they take their significantly lighter bags and start the trek back towards the Shack. 

“So, creepy sky giant, what’s up with that?” Dipper asks tartly as they duck under the tree cover and a plop of snow that had been cradled in the needles of the pines falls on his face.

“It’s… a very strange creature,” Bill groans. “He doesn’t really have a name, as far as I know. I’m not exactly  _ in  _ with that immortal crowd.” 

By his side, Dipper stiffens a little before relaxing again, melting slightly into the space surrounding Bill’s body heat. 

“Okay, you said he was bad news. Why?”

“Because he only condescends to visit this plane once every thousand years or so,” Bill explains. “And whenever he does, it spells the end of whatever civilization is unlucky enough to cross paths with him. Let me put it this way: take the most horrific, awful thing you can think of, and multiply it by cancer.”

“What?! Why? Does he try to take over the world or something?” Dipper frets, one hand flying to his hair where he starts combing through the curls in his signature nervous gesture. 

“Oh, he’s already taken over plenty of worlds. He doesn’t need that. He just likes to check on things, stir the pot a little, send his followers after each other until both sides are completely decimated. No big deal,” Bill says in mock-nonchalance, though he’s unable to suppress his grin when Dipper turns wide brown eyes up at him, horrified. “Okay, okay, so it’s a pretty big deal. Basically, he’s like a creature made entirely out of magical energy. The stuff that makes you able to vanish chunks of dirt—”

“Hey!” Dipper pouts.

“—and summon your keys to your hands, he’s only that. Nothing mortal ties him to this realm, which is why he’s so disinterested in it usually. It’s like looking into a pail of dirty water and twirling your hand around in it to make little waves. Maybe a little entertaining for like, three seconds, then after that it’s like, ‘why am I here? This sucks.’ Does that make sense?” Bill kicks a pile of snow that turns out to be a branch of a nearby tree laden-down by the white powder and flinches a little when some of it comes flying up at his face. 

Dipper giggles. 

Bill scowls.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Dipper replies, biting his lip to hide his smile, and for some reason Bill kind of wants to stare at it all day. “When I was in uh…  _ magic mode  _ earlier, I couldn’t see or feel anything other than that white light—y’know, from my nightmares?”

Bill nods slowly, taking this new information in. 

“And it really  _ hurt,  _ like, it was being on fire while also drowning under that frozen lake and being stabbed in the brain but the knife is also on fire,” Dipper winces, causing Bill to shiver empathetically. 

No, NO! He does  _ not  _ do that—empathy is for humans, and it prevents them from killing one another, which means he needs to get rid of it before this year is up so that he’s able to exact his revenge without feeling sick with himself afterwards!

“But then, after a while I got sick of it and managed to sort of… press through it? I don’t know, I just jumped some barrier and suddenly all sensation was gone from me. I couldn’t feel any pain, it was like I was only tapped into the magic side of myself,” Dipper explains, interrupting Bill’s mental scolding. “Also, I—I saw it. The creature. Turns out, my vision hasn’t been going  _ just _ white this whole time. I’m looking into those eyes.”

“And they’re looking back,” Bill says with a grim shake of his head. 

“Yeah,” Dipper says quietly. “What do you think it wants?”

“I don’t know,” Bill replies.

“Why do I see it whenever I do big magic?” 

“I don’t know.”

“How do we get rid of it?”

“I don’t know.” Bill groans and rubs his forehead with one hand, eyes squinting shut. “Like I said, ancient immortals? Not my biggest forte. In fact, they’re not anyone’s forte. The only beings that know anything about them know enough to know that it doesn’t matter in the end or some bullshit like that—whatever, higher immortal beings are stupid omnipotent fucks. Never become one.”

“I’ll try my best,” Dipper giggles, clearly amused at no longer being the only one showing outward distress.

“Wonderful,” Bill gripes. “Now, I think our first step has got to be getting those magic meltdowns under control. Remember how I said he doesn’t have any real connection to the mortal plane? That’s going to play to our advantage. It means that he can only really watch us closely when you’re separated from your mortal self and focused completely on your magical self.”

“Okay,” Dipper says warily. “But I never know exactly when they’re gonna happen. Usually the only indication is like… a feeling of deeply-rooted dread that something terrible is about to happen. And I feel dread all the time, I’m kind of a nervous person!”

“That’s fine, we can work with that. What about your nightmares? Are there some nights that are worse than others for any reason?” Bill queries.

“Uhh… Not that I can think of?” Dipper shrugs. “Actually, I think the first one happened after my phone conversation with Mabel after the whole Robbie Incident. I wasn’t feeling dreadful at all that night… in fact, I think that was the most at-ease going to sleep I’d felt in a while,” he confesses, averting his eyes from Bill’s thoughtful gaze.

“It could be because you put your guard down,” Bill supplies. “When you sleep, your consciousness takes a vacation from the hardships of mortality, you don’t need to move or speak or even think, you just sleep. That’s why it’s easy for magical beings to hijack the consciousness of a sleeping mind—there’s less to ground you.”

“That’s… that’s what you did, isn’t it? When you k-kissed me, you were grounding me back to reality, right?” Dipper stumbles shyly over the word ‘kissed,’ making Bill smirk. 

“Sure did,” Bill says triumphantly. “That’s why they call me the strongest kisser in the galaxy!”

“Nobody calls you that,” Dipper snorts. 

“You don’t know that,” Bill retorts, crossing his arms. “My life beyond the bounds of our knowledge is a big open slate, remember?”

“That’s right!” Dipper’s shoulders straighten, and he turns hopeful eyes up in Bill’s direction. “Did you figure out if the immortal beast guy is the thing that wiped your memories?” 

Bill nods neutrally. “He’s certainly strong enough to do it, yeah.”

Dipper turns his attention back to the path ahead of them, his lips pursed in a newfound determination that catches Bill a little off guard. 

“Then we  _ have  _ to stop him,” he hisses. Oh, sweet, caring, naive little Dipper. Despite obviously being in greater danger, he’s more worried about Bill’s  _ feelings  _ about being an amnesiac. It would be endearing if not mostly worrying. Bill experiences a flare of emotion halfway between excitement and dread at the knowledge that he’s unwittingly gained himself an ally who seems to value Bill’s well-being over his own. Most of Bill’s followers are in it for selfish reasons—making deals with the demon to get something for themselves. Never has Bill forged this kind of connection with any mortal before. 

It’s uncertain territory, and uncertain territory makes Bill uneasy. He bites his lip and gazes at the back of Dipper’s head, a couple paces ahead of him.  _ All  _ of this is making Bill uneasy, even without that asshole of an ancient immortal coming and complicating things past what he’d ever expected. 

He supposes he does know one thing for sure, though, and it’s that kissing Dipper had felt  _ damn  _ good. Perhaps there are some good things to come out of being stuck in this meat suit.

Thinking this, Bill reaches out until his hand snags on the collar of Dipper’s coat. The kid makes a tiny strangled noise and staggers back, whirling around with an annoyed glint in his eye. 

“Wha—mmf!” Dipper’s cry of protest is cut off by Bill surging forward and capturing Dipper’s lips against his own. Dipper fights back for less than a second before he’s melting up against Bill, the same way he’d done in the clearing earlier when it had felt like they needed to be connected in order to survive. 

Bill pushes forward, hands at Dipper’s hips, until the kid’s back is pressed against one of the redwoods lining the path back to the Shack. He tilts his head to get a better angle, and Dipper sighs into his mouth, his tongue tracing a line along Bill’s teeth. His face is cold, and Bill raises an unconscious hand to Dipper’s cheek to help warm him up. 

That seems to snap Dipper out of something, because he’s suddenly reaching out to push Bill back by the shoulders, tilting his head away as best he can given his compromising position against the tree. Bill smirks at that, though his brows are knit together in mild frustration at the fact that they’ve stopped. 

“Can’t this wait until we’re not in the middle of the woods?” Dipper huffs, gaze flitting between Bill and the sky above them, as if he can still see the thousands of eyes boring down on them. 

“I believe you issued me a challenge,” Bill retorts, leaning down to nip at Dipper’s neck. “You said that once we figured out what the creature was, I could ‘do my worst,’ correct?”

“I—yeah, but—” Dipper cuts himself off with a soft gasp as Bill’s teeth sink greedily into the sensitive skin beneath Dipper’s jaw. 

“Hmm?” Bill prompts. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Fuck you,” Dipper grumbles between another hitched breath, his hand flying to Bill’s hair and holding tight as Bill leaves another mark, smoothing it over with his warm tongue. 

“Pretty sure I’ll be the one doing the fucking, but thanks for the offer,” Bill bites back, lifting his head to once again claim Dipper’s lips and silence his replied indignant squawk. Dipper’s hands, which are already tangled in Bill’s hair, slip down to cup Bill’s jaw as they press closer together. Even as he protests, Dipper can’t help himself, sinking against the tree behind him as his limbs cling to Bill’s body like honey. 

Or at least, that’s what Bill thinks until a sharp, freezing cold fingertip jabs into his side. 

Bill flinches and pulls away, scowling. “What was—?!”

“Not here,” Dipper demands again, and the smirk on his face is far too satisfied for Bill’s tastes. “I’m freezing.” To illustrate his point, Dipper again reaches out, attempting to warm his hands up on the exposed skin at Bill’s abdomen, which is covered only by a hoodie. Bill lurches out of the way, shooting a warning snarl over his shoulder as he starts heading back towards the Shack. 

“Fine, fine, ice queen. But hurry up!” 

Dipper complies, trotting behind Bill for the next hundred feet or so of wood before they make it to the road leading up to the Shack. The world is still just as quiet as it had been earlier this morning, the pathway unmarred by the tracks of tourist buses. 

Rounding the last bend before the Shack, Dipper skips ahead, rummaging for his keys in his back pocket. 

“You could just use magic to open the door,” Bill points out when Dipper nearly drops his lanyard, fumbling with the several metal keys around the ring. Dipper rolls his eyes.

“Well, apparently me using the easy magic shortcut always ends in vanishing chunks of dirt, so…” he trails off as he finally wiggles the right key into the lock of the door leading into the back of the house. 

Bill gives him just the handful of seconds it takes to quietly close the door behind them before he slams Dipper into the wall behind it, immediately taking control in a bruising kiss. 

It’s only a handful of seconds before Dipper’s pushing away  _ again,  _ turning his head away to block Bill’s access. Bill huffs a frustrated growl and quirks an eyebrow at Dipper’s troubled face, just inches away from his own.

“Wait,” Dipper murmurs, sounding a little breathless. “Stan should be up by now, right? It’s after noon, usually he’d be up watching TV with a plate of bacon or something by now.”

Bill blinks, turning his attention to the still quiet house around them. 

Not even a muffled snore drifts from Stan’s bedroom, the hardwood floor is void of its usual creaks and groans whenever someone walks by. 

Not good.

“Should we check on him?” Dipper asks anxiously, biting his already swollen red lip. Bill tries not to sigh in yearning.

“Yeah, probably. Just to be safe,” Bill concedes, reluctantly pulling away from Dipper’s body but keeping an arm looped around the kid’s shoulders. He can’t cause a scene and reveal how little he cares for the old man’s safety in the scheme of things, not without dissolving the kind, compassionate front he’s worked so hard to build. Dipper likely won’t calm down enough to have any fun until he sees that his Grunkle is safe and sound, passed out in his bed. Once that’s taken care of, it’s business as usual. It’s not like anything  _ serious  _ could’ve happened in the short time they were gone. 

He follows Dipper through the house to Stan’s room, a place Bill has only seen a handful of times from the outside looking in. 

Silence, thick and hollow greets them from the other side of the door. No snores, no shufflings of money, no curses over fraudulent receipts, nothing. Something grim settles in the pit of Bill’s stomach. 

“Grunkle Stan?” Dipper calls tentatively, a slight quiver to his voice. He reaches for the handle, nudging the door open with a creak. Already knowing the outcome from that particular action, Bill turns on his heel and stomps throughout the rest of the house, searching for signs of life, of movement. The quiet of the world around him is static—so much all at once that it’s numbed to meaninglessness. 

Behind him, a crunch echoes loud enough that Bill flinches. Or perhaps it wasn’t loud at all, just the only noise yet to break the silence. He whirls around to face the source of the noise, the old man’s bedroom door, left ajar. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows what he’s going to find when he walks in there. He knows before he even rounds the corner to find Dipper standing motionless in the middle of a carpet of broken glass, before the pungent aura of blood and magic rolls over him, out past the window and into the thick of trees behind the house. Particularly, three brand new birches standing mangled and rotten directly in front of the window, framing a battered red fez as it’s suspended by a residual magic so powerful it stings. 

“Stan’s not here,” Dipper says quietly. Bill can’t see his face, nor can he detect any kind of readable emotion from the kid’s monotone statement. He could be furious, heartbroken, thrilled, startled, murderous. He could be on the verge of self destruction.

_ That would solve a lot of my problems, wouldn’t it?  _ Bill wonders to himself idly, even as he’s reaching out to wrap an arm around the kid’s front and pull his face into his chest, removing him from the edge of that steep slope and into the safety of his arms. 

At last, Dipper takes a shuddering breath in, and clutches to Bill like a lifeline. 

Outside, sixty degrees come in threes, watching from within birch trees. 

Bill can’t tear his eyes away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ladies and gentlefriends, welcome aboard the first train to PLOTSVILLE!!! buckle in, because this is where the real story kicks in >:3c
> 
> (also, if you saw the reference with the cancer line, i'd like to ask for your hand in marriage)


End file.
